Works For Julian Bream PDF

Florida State University Libraries
2015
A Survey of the Solo Guitar Works Written

for Julian Bream
Michael McCallie
Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact lib-ir@fsu.edu
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF MUSIC
A SURVEY OF THE SOLO GUITAR WORKS WRITTEN FOR JULIAN BREAM
By
MICHAEL MCCALLIE
A Treatise submitted to the

College of Music
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Music
2015

Michael McCallie defended this treatise on October 22, 2015.
The members of the supervisory committee were:
Bruce Holzman
Professor Directing Treatise
Jane Piper Clendinning

University Representative
Benjamin Sung
Committee Member
Melanie Punter
Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and
certifies that the treatise has been approved in accordance with university requirements.
ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the members of my Doctoral committee, Jane Piper Clendinning,
Bruce Holzman, Melanie Punter and Benjamin Sung, for their support and encouragement during
the writing of this dissertation. I would also like to thank Zachary Johnson, Eliot Fisk, David
Tanenbaum, Marco Sartor, David Starobin and Angelo Gilardino for agreeing to be interviewed
and for lending their expertise to this project.
I would like to thank my parents, Mike and Pam McCallie, my grandparents Lowell and
Sharon Coe, and my brother Andrew McCallie for a lifetime of love and support and for never
doubting my decision to become a musician. I would also like to thank my teachers, Charles
Evans, Stephen Robinson, Benjamin Verdery and Bruce Holzman for introducing me to many of
the works written for Julian Bream, and for offering valuable insight into performing many of
them.
Most importantly, I would like to thank my wife Kristen Pavlik McCallie without whom
this treatise would not have been possible. Thank you for the hours of listening and proofreading
and for the years of tireless support. I love you.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vi

List of Musical Examples ............................................................................................................. vii
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ix
CHAPTER 1—INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1
Biography of Julian Bream .......................................................................................................... 2

Segovia and Bream: Creating a Repertoire .................................................................................. 6
A Note on the Choice of Pieces ................................................................................................... 8
CHAPTER 2—THE PIECES WRITTEN FOR JULIAN BREAM ............................................. 11
Reginald Smith-Brindle – Nocturne (1946), El Polifemo de Oro (1956), Variants on

Two Themes of J. S. Bach (1970) ............................................................................................... 11
Lennox Berkeley – Sonatina, Op. 52 No. 1 (1957) ................................................................... 19
Hans Werner Henze – Drei tentos (1958), Royal Winter Music: First Sonata (1976)
Royal Winter Music: Second Sonata (1980) .............................................................................. 24
Denis ApIvor – Variations, Op. 29 (1959) ................................................................................ 30
Benjamin Britten – Nocturnal, Op. 70 after John Dowland (1963) .......................................... 33
Richard Rodney Bennett – Five Impromptus (1968), Sonata (1983) ........................................ 40
Tom Eastwood – Ballade-Phantasy (1968) ............................................................................... 47
Peter Racine Fricker – Paseo, Op. 61 (1970) ............................................................................ 50
Malcolm Arnold – Fantasy for Guitar, Op. 107 (1971) ............................................................ 55
William Walton – Five Bagatelles (1971) ................................................................................. 60
Humphrey Searle – Five (1974) ................................................................................................. 66
Alan Rawsthorne – Elegy (1975) ............................................................................................... 69
Giles Swayne – Solo, Op. 42 (1986, rev. 1995) ......................................................................... 74
Peter Maxwell-Davies – Hill Runes (1981) ............................................................................... 79
Michael Berkeley – Sonata in One Movement (1982) .............................................................. 83
Michael Tippett – The Blue Guitar (1982-1983) ....................................................................... 88
Tōru Takemitsu – All in Twilight (1987), Muir Woods from In the Woods (1995) ................... 93
Leo Brouwer – Sonata (1990).................................................................................................. 102
CHAPTER 3—CONCLUSION.................................................................................................. 106
APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................ 107
A—INTERVIEWS ..................................................................................................................... 107
B—PERMISSIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE .................................................................... 135
C—THE PIECES: REFERENCE TABLE ................................................................................. 155
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 159
iv
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...................................................................................................... 168
v
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: B—A—C—H Motive ................................................................................................... 15
Figure 2: J. S. Bach, Fugue Subject from BWV 861 .................................................................... 15
Figure 3: ApIvor, Variations, Op. 29 Twelve-Tone Matrix ......................................................... 32
Figure 4: Eliot Fisk’s Interpretation of the Form of Britten’s Nocturnal ..................................... 39
Figure 5: Octatonic Scale .............................................................................................................. 98
vi
LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES
Example 1: Smith-Brindle, Nocturne, mm. 1-5 ............................................................................ 13
Example 2: Smith-Brindle, Nocturne, mm. 35-38 ........................................................................ 14
Example 3: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Poco adagio,” mm. 1-4 ............................................... 16
Example 4: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Vivo,” mm. 4 ................................................................ 16
Example 5: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Lento,” mm. 1 .............................................................. 17
Example 6: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Lento,” mm. 12-13 ....................................................... 17
Example 7: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Allegretto,” mm. 2-5 .................................................... 18
Example 8: L. Berkeley, Sonatina, Op. 52 No. 1, “Lento,” mm. 1 .............................................. 23
Example 9: Henze, Royal Winter Music II, “Mad Lady Macbeth,” mm. 270-271 ...................... 28
Example 10: ApIvor, Variations, Op. 29, “Poco lento: Affetuoso,” mm. 1 ................................. 32
Example 11: Bennett, Impromptus, “Agitato,” mm. 30-31 .......................................................... 45
Example 12: Bennett, Impromptus, “Con fuoco,” mm. 1-3 ......................................................... 46
Example 13: Eastwood, Ballade-Phantasy, “Ballade,” mm. 1-4 ................................................. 48
Example 14: Eastwood, Ballade-Phantasy, “Ballade,” mm. 57 ................................................... 48
Example 15: Eastwood, Ballade-Phantasy, “Phantasy,” mm. 1-2 ............................................... 49
Example 16: Fricker, Paseo, Op. 61, mm. 1-2 .............................................................................. 52
Example 17: Fricker, Paseo, Op. 61, mm. 144-145 ...................................................................... 53
Example 18: Fricker, Paseo, Op. 61, mm. 199-202 ...................................................................... 53
Example 19: Arnold, Fantasy for Guitar, Op. 107, “Maestoso,” mm. 1-2 ................................... 57
Example 20: Arnold, Fantasy for Guitar, Op. 107, “Scherzo,” mm. 8-9 ..................................... 58
Example 21: Arnold, Fantasy for Guitar, Op. 107, “Fughetta,” mm. 1-7 .................................... 58
Example 22: Arnold, Fantasy for Guitar, Op. 107, “March,” mm. 3-4 ....................................... 59
vii
Example 23: Walton, Five Bagatelles, “Allegro,” mm. 14-18 ..................................................... 64
Example 24: Walton, Five Bagatelles, “Allegro,” mm. 60 .......................................................... 64
Example 25: Walton, Five Bagatelles, “Alla cubana,” mm. 8-9 .................................................. 65
Example 26: Walton, Five Bagatelles, “Alla cubana,” mm. 44-45 .............................................. 65
Example 27: Walton, Five Bagatelles, “Con slancio,” mm. 1-2 .................................................. 66
Example 28: Rawsthorne, Elegy, mm. 1-3 ................................................................................... 71
Example 29: Rawsthorne, Elegy, mm. 20-23 ............................................................................... 72
Example 30: Rawsthorne, Elegy, mm. 163-165 ........................................................................... 73
Example 31: Swayne, Solo, Op. 42, mm. 63-66 ........................................................................... 76
Example 32: Swayne, Solo, Op. 42, mm. 143-146 ....................................................................... 77
Example 33: Swayne, Solo, Op. 42, mm. 43 ................................................................................ 78
Example 34: M. Berkeley, Sonata in One Movement, mm. 1-3 ................................................... 86
Example 35: M. Berkeley, Sonata in One Movement, mm. 67 .................................................... 86
Example 36: M. Berkeley, Sonata in One Movement, mm. 76-78 ............................................... 87
Example 37: M. Berkeley, Sonata in One Movement, mm. 17 .................................................... 88
Example 38: Tippett, The Blue Guitar, “Transforming,” mm. 85-86 .......................................... 93
Example 39: Takemitsu, All in Twilight, “III,” mm. 1-2 ............................................................. 98
Example 40: Takemitsu, All in Twilight, “I,” mm. 47-48 ........................................................... 98
Example 41: Takemitsu, All in Twilight, “I,” mm. 2-3 ............................................................... 99
Example 42: Takemitsu, All in Twilight, “I,” mm. 1-4 ............................................................. 100
Example 43: Takemitsu, In the Woods, “Muir Woods,” mm. 11-14 ......................................... 101
Example 44: Pasquini, Toccata con lo Scherzo del Cucco, mm. 1-3 ......................................... 104
Example 45: Brouwer, Sonata, “Toccata de Pasquini,” mm. 1-3 .............................................. 105
viii
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this treatise is to present a survey of the solo guitar works written for
Julian Bream and to illuminate their historical significance and lasting importance to the guitar
repertoire. For each piece, this treatise provides a brief biographical sketch of each composer, a
survey of the relevant literature and, where necessary, a brief theoretical analysis. At the end of
each section, a “Performer’s Note” has been included, which details the specific difficulties of
performing each piece. Hopefully, this treatise will provide guitarists interested in the pieces
written for Julian Bream a reference for performance and study.
ix
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
During the early twentieth century, the eminent Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia
established the classical guitar as a legitimate concert instrument: he revolutionized playing
technique, secured concerts in the most prestigious concert halls in the world and assembled a
repertoire which was suited for the concert stage rather than the salon. Although an innovator in
most things, Segovia’s aesthetic sensibilities were fundamentally traditional. Many of the works
he commissioned, including pieces written by notable composers such as Manuel Ponce, Mario
Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Federico Moreno Torroba, were Neo-Romantic in style and paid
homage to the guitar’s Spanish roots. By the mid-Twentieth century, there were few works
written for the guitar in a contemporary musical style.
Beginning in the mid-1950s the young English guitarist Julian Bream would remedy this
situation by embarking upon a career-long project to commission a contemporary repertoire for
the guitar. Between 1946 and 1990, Bream successfully solicited works from a number of
contemporary composers including William Walton, Hans Werner Henze, Tōru Takemitsu,
Michael Tippett and Benjamin Britten – works that form the core of the modern classical guitar
repertoire.
During the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, other guitarists have made
significant contributions to the contemporary repertoire by commissioning and performing new
works. Composers as diverse as George Crumb and Elliott Carter have dedicated works to the
American guitarist David Starobin. Eliot Fisk has received new works from Luciano Berio,
Nicholas Maw, and George Rochberg and the guitarist David Tanenbaum has premiered works
dedicated to him by Lou Harrison and Aaron Jay Kernis.
The purpose of this treatise will be to present a survey of the solo pieces written for
Julian Bream and to illuminate their historical significance and lasting importance to the guitar
repertoire. Although many of the works have been written about a great deal, some, including
Tom Eastwood’s Fantasy-Ballade, Giles Swayne’s Solo, and Peter Racine Fricker’s Paseo, have
little or no presence on recordings or in academic writing. For these lesser-known works, this
treatise provides information on Bream’s relationship with the work and its composer if
available, a biographical sketch of the composer, a brief analysis of the work and a performer’s

guide for classical guitarists and other musicians who might the work intriguing. This treatise
also provides information about each composer’s style and the difficulty level of each piece. For
the more widely played and dissected works such as Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal, Op 70 after
John Dowland, Tōru Takemitsu’s All in Twilight or William Walton’s Five Bagatelles, this
treatise provides a brief biographical sketch of the composer, any relevant information on
Bream’s relationship with the work and its composer, and an overview of the current scholarship
written on the piece, including analysis if appropriate, and a performer’s guide to the work.
Although Julian Bream is known for his many accomplishments, including his unique
playing style and his prominence in the Early Music revival, his work in procuring and
championing new works may be his greatest legacy to the classical guitar and its players. In the
years since the majority of these works were written, several guitarists have created similar
bodies of commissioned works for the guitar that are equally significant, but Bream’s
commissions remain unique.
Biography of Julian Bream
An Englishman playing the guitar is a kind of blasphemy.

– Juan Manén, Violinist1
Julian Bream was born in 1933 in Battersea, a borough of London. His father, Henry
Bream, was a successful commercial artist and an accomplished amateur guitarist. “My father
was a very natural musician,” Bream later told director Paul Balmer in the documentary Julian
Bream: My Life in Music “he couldn’t read music, but he could play all the popular songs of the
day.” 2
Soon, father and son were learning the guitar together. They focused primarily on the
classical guitar, however Henry Bream made sure his son received a proper education in basic
jazz guitar, eventually allowing Julian to “sit in” with his dance band during performances.
Initially, Bream was more interested in the playing of the Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt
and his Quintette du Hot Club du France than classical masters like Andres Segovia and his

1
Wade, Graham, Traditions of the Classical Guitar (London: John Calder, 1980), 204.
2
Paul Balmer, Julian Bream: My Life in Music, DVD (Avie, 2006), chap. 5.
2
classical playing always retained a certain spontaneity from this early love. Bream later said of
Django Reinhardt, “ [his] playing was [...] powerful and dramatic, but also lyrical. It seemed that
he held in his grasp the whole gamut of human expression.”3
Bream and son quickly realized that learning the classical guitar was a difficult process.
Most of Bream’s early knowledge of the instrument and its technique came from his father and
various primers he had collected.4 After some time, the Breams sought the advice of the
Philharmonic Society of Guitarists. Directed by the Russian Dr. Boris Perott, the members of the
PSG were a group of enthusiasts based in London, who met regularly to perform for one another.
By age 13, Julian Bream was performing entire recital programs for the Cheltenham Guitar
Circle and could play many of Segovia’s transcriptions and signature pieces from the Maestro’s
repertoire with ease.5
In 1948, Julian Bream was granted admission to the Royal Academy of Music. His
acceptance was one of the many indicators of his precocious talent: technically speaking, a
course in guitar was not yet offered at the academy. Once again, Bream found himself without a
proper guitar teacher, although he did learn the fundamentals of music theory, harmony and
history. “They said we can’t teach you on the guitar, but we can teach you on the piano,” Bream
remembered later. Ultimately, Bream spent his student years at the Royal Academy, “sneaking
his guitar in the back door,” while ostensibly studying the piano.6
Bream’s time at The Royal Academy was brief: he attended classes from 1949 until 1952
when he was drafted into military service.7 In later interviews, Bream claimed that he was treated
as a kind of “black sheep” while at the Royal Academy. However, several letters written by the
director, Sir George Dyson, on Bream’s behalf seem to prove his intuitive gift at the guitar had
not gone unnoticed. “You have heard Julian Bream, the guitarist,” Dyson wrote to Emmie Tillet,
a renowned British music agent, “and I hope you agree with us that he should have a fine future.
Will you help us to launch him? He is still here for general musical training, but he is quite ready
for professional work on his special instrument…”8

3
Ibid., chap. 6.
4
Ibid.
5
Wade, Graham, Traditions of the Classical Guitar, 199.
6
Balmer, Julian Bream: My Life in Music, chap. 13.
7
Ibid., chap. 17.
8
Button, Stuart W., Julian Bream: The Foundations of a Musical Career (Westport, CT: The Bold Strummer, Ltd.,
2006), 117.
3
With the help of Emmie Tillet, Bream performed his debut recital at Wigmore Hall in
London in 1951 at the age of 18. Five years later, in 1956, he recorded his first commercially
produced albums for the Westminister label9 and eventually signed a record contract with RCA,
one of the most prestigious labels in the world. In the mid 1950s, Bream embarked upon a series
of concert tours, each more successful than the last. In the book Julian Bream: My Life on the
Road, Bream says of his many tours, “I seem to book myself up years ahead and I thrive on it.”10
Perhaps the two most notable progressions in Bream’s career during this time were his
championing of modern music and his discovery of the lute. Beginning in the mid 1950s, he
began to commission works from contemporary composers and to champion these works on the
concert stage. He had grown tired of the “delicious morsels” style of programming to which
Segovia had subscribed and sought to build a more substantial repertoire. He later recalled
Segovia’s programming choices as, “a bunch of meringues and lollipops,” asserting, “I’ve
always been a meat and potatoes man.”11
Bream commissioned works from a wide array of contemporary composers including
Hans Werner Henze, Michael Tippett, William Walton and Tōru Takemitsu. One of the most
significant commissions was the Nocturnal, Op. 70 after John Dowland by Benjamin Britten.
Originally titled Night Fancy, the piece is a set of Theme and Variations composed on the
Dowland song Come, Heavy Sleep. Graham Wade has stated, “the beginning of the end of
Segovia’s domination over the 20th century repertoire may be dated from the Aldeburgh premiere
of the Nocturnal.”12
Bream was also instrumental in the revival of lute playing throughout the world. While
visiting the library of the Royal Academy of Music, he discovered a dusty, forgotten tome that
would change the course of his career. It was a volume called Thirteen Lute Solos by John
Dowland: Arranged for Keyboard by Peter Warlock. “I quickly realized how wonderful this
music was and how well-suited [it was] for the guitar,” Bream later recalled, “it really changed
my life.”13 Bream was so enamored by Dowland’s music that he immediately began to search in
earnest for a lute. However, in late 1940s London an actual lute was quite difficult to procure.

9
Wade, Graham, A Concise History of the Classical Guitar (Pacific: Mel Bay Publications, 2001), 139.
10
Palmer, Tony, Julian Bream: A Life on the Road (New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1983), 33.
11
12
Victor Coelho, The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 192.
13
4
Bream eventually had approach English luthier Thomas Goff with a commission to build a
replica.14
Soon, Bream was performing and making recordings on the lute in addition to the guitar.
After meeting Peter Pears at the Aldeburgh Festival, the two formed a duo that specialized in
performances of music from Elizabethan England. Bream also formed The Julian Bream
Consort, a consort consisting of Bream and five additional musicians who also performed on
authentic instruments. The consort included: treble and bass viols, a Renaissance flute, a cittern,
mandolin and an additional lute.”15 By about 1960, the early music movement was getting
underway (…) and I believe that my Consort was responsible getting [that movement]
underway,” Bream later remembered.16
Throughout the rest of his career, Bream continued to concertize and record prolifically.
At the time of his retirement from the concert stage in 2002, Bream said, “[I’ve] done 55 years
on the planks, and I thought that was quite long enough (…) I thought this was the moment to let
somebody take over the reins.”17
For several years after his retirement, Bream continued to practice regularly and give
informal recitals within his local community. However, after a fall, while walking his dog
Django, Bream broke his hips and left hand and has stopped playing altogether.18 He does
manage to keep himself busy: for many years he has presided over the committee that awards
The Julian Bream Prize to talented young guitarists at The Royal College in London and has
recently commissioned two new works, Sonata No. 5 ‘Ars Combinatoria’ by Leo Brouwer and
Beyond the White Hand– Construction with Guitar Player by Harrison Birtwistle,19 through his
foundation, The Julian Bream Trust. Even though he can no longer play the guitar, he feels that
he is still maturing as a musician. “I feel like I am a better musician now than I was at 70,”
Bream said in recent interview with The Guardian, “but I can’t prove it.”20

14
Palmer, Tony, Julian Bream: A Life on the Road, 121.
15
Ibid., 117.
16
17
Ibid., chap. 2.
18
Jeffries, Stuart, “Julian Bream: ‘I’m a Better Musician Now than When I Was 70’,” The Guardian, last modified
September 13, 2013, accessed September 9, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/sep/13/julian-bream-
better-musician-70.
19
Saba, Thérèse Wassily, “Brouwer Première at Wigmore Hall,” International Classical Guitar, accessed August
20, 2015, http://internationalclassicalguitar.com/2015/04/24/brouwer-premiere-at-wigmore-hall-london/.
20
Jeffries, Stuart, “Julian Bream: ‘I’m a Better Musician Now than When I Was 70’.”
5
Segovia and Bream: Creating a Repertoire
We had Segovia, whose contribution was of course invaluable […] and Segovia was the first to
figure [it] out--he was basically [the first great guitarist] not to compose himself. And he said at
the beginning of his career “my kingdom for a repertoire.”
-David Tanenbaum21
Guitar music comes from the players, not just the composers. There wouldn't be a guitar
repertoire if it weren't for Julian Bream.
-Richard Rodney Bennett22
In an article for Classical Guitar magazine, John Duarte succinctly recounts the two
greatest successes in the career of the great Spanish maestro Andrés Segovia:
[First, Segovia established] the instrument on concert platforms around the world,
to an hitherto undreamed-of extent [and second, he won] respect from other
musicians for the guitar and its potential in high-quality music-making. This had a
variety of consequences, one of the most important of which was his persuasion
of non-guitarist composers to write for this humble and previously undervalued
instrument.23
Segovia approached a multitude of composers and requested original works for the guitar,
receiving a multitude of works that bear a dedication to him.
Segovia received many pieces, however he was drawn to a small handful of composers
with whom he shared a common musical sensibility. In an article in the Summer 1984 issue of
Guitar Review titled “The Guitar Literature: Beyond Segovia's Influence,” Allan Kozinn makes a
list of these principle composers and deems them “the Segovia six:” Joaquin Turina, Federico
Moreno Torroba, Alexandre Tansman, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and
Manuel Ponce.24 Together, the “Segovia Six” created a vast repertoire of pieces that satisfied the

21
Tanenbaum, David, interview by McCallie, Michael, Telephone, August 21, 2015.
22
Jim Tosone, Classical Guitarists: Conversations (Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland, 2000), 70.
23
Duarte, John, “Julian Bream: The Contribution,” Classical Guitar 1, no. 1 (October 1982): 9.
24
Kozinn, Allan, “The Guitar Literature: Beyond Segovia’s Influence,” Guitar Review 58 (Summer 1984): 10–11.
6
maestro’s need for new repertoire that was both compositionally sound and compelling to
general audiences.
Many of the works written by the “Segovia Six” were Romantic in style and made great
use of the Spanish and Flamenco traditions of the guitar. In the book Traditions of the Classical
Guitar, Graham Wade describes the musical style of Torroba, providing what might be
considered a description of the stylistic profile of the entire Segovia repertoire: “undemanding
on the listener, very rhythmic, concise, with imaginative titles, and closely linked with the dances
of Spanish folk music though without being too dependent on Flamenco motifs.”25
Segovia was successful in achieving his goal of creating a new repertoire, however he
frequently over-looked composers whose compositional style was progressive or contemporary.
“You could make the argument,” David Tanenbaum said in an interview, “and I think it's true,
that [Segovia] did not [commission works from] some of the greatest composers of his time. He
never got Bartok, Ravel, […] Stravinsky [or] Shostakovich. There are many reasons [for this],
but it's just the way it went.”26
When asked in an interview about his reason for commissioning new works, Julian
Bream told Paul Balmer, “as I began to [become] more interested in the piano repertoire—
Debussy, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach—I began to feel that the guitar repertoire was lacking a lot of
variety. Not only variety, but quality.”27 Over the course of nearly half a century, Bream
commissioned works from a number of composers who would begin to fill the stylistic gaps of
the Segovia repertoire. Although other guitarists have commissioned equally distinguished
works, the Bream repertoire is unique.
Bream commissioned works from composers of various nationalities and compositional
styles, but ultimately, British composers provided the majority of the pieces written for Bream.
Britten, Arnold, Walton, Maxwell Davies, Tippett and several other British composers are
featured in this survey. Bream was able to solicit new works from nearly every major British
composer of the second half of the 20th century. No other body of work written for any guitarist
can claim to represent the entire gamut of British music in the 20th century more
comprehensively.

25
Wade, Graham, Traditions of the Classical Guitar, 153.
26
Tanenbaum, David, interview.
27
7
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Bream repertoire is the influence of the
guitarist himself on the compositions. Bream spent countless hours with many of the composers
editing and reworking the material for publication. Many similar technical challenges reappear
throughout these works that were specialties of Bream’s very personal approach to playing the
guitar: a wide range of color and dynamics; harmonics of all types; and chords that are meant to
be played by “dragging” the thumb and fingers across the strings. Additionally, it was not
uncommon for Bream to suggest changes to the finished compositions.
I believe that the pieces written for Julian Bream represent one of the most significant
contributions to the classical guitar in the 20th century. After the monumental achievements of
Segovia and the creation of a basic repertoire, Julian Bream introduced music written in the
modern style for the instrument from some of the greatest composers of his time. “I think this
was an invaluable contribution,” David Tanenbaum claimed in an interview, “it wasn't as much
repertoire as Segovia created, but it catapulted us into the mainstream of classical music.”28
A Note On the Choice of Pieces
Although every attempt has been made to include all of the solo pieces written for Julian
Bream, it has been necessary to make some decisions about which pieces should be included. In
every case in which the published score of a work bears a dedication to Julian Bream on the title
page, that piece has been included in this survey.
Some of the works do not bear a dedication in the score, but were clearly written for
Bream. For instance, the Five Bagatelles by William Walton were dedicated to Malcolm Arnold
but Bream edited the score and recalled to Tony Palmer that “[Walton] wrote five superb
Bagatelles for me...”29 Other works that do not bear a specific dedication in the score but are
known to have been written for Bream include: Tippett’s The Blue Guitar, Henze’s Royal Winter
Music: First Sonata on Shakespearean Characters, Smith-Brindle’s El Polifemo de Oro and the
aforementioned Walton Bagatelles.
A work that does not bear a dedication to Bream and seems unfit for inclusion based on
the grounds stated above, but I have chosen to include them for circumstantial reasons is Henze’s

28
29
Palmer, Tony, Julian Bream: A Life on the Road (New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1983), 93.
8
Drei tentos from Kammermusik 1958. The piece is dedicated to Benjamin Britten and is, by
definition, not a solo piece. However, the tentos are solo interludes within a chamber work and
were frequently performed as a solo set by Bream. In the book A Life on the Road, Bream states
that the guitar part in Kammermusik 1958 was written for him.30
There are some works that have not been included. The guitar works of Terry Usher,
Impromptu, Two Minuets, Suite for Guitar, Sonata in A major, Canzoncina and Arabesque, Op.
6, are not included in this treatise. Written for Julian at the behest of his father Henry, the pieces
represent the juvenilia of the Bream repertoire and are not stylistically congruous with the larger
repertoire. According to Stuart Button “Usher’s compositional ambitions remained deeply rooted
in the nineteenth-century guitarist-composer tradition, and although his music broadened Julian’s
repertoire, it did not match up with Henry Bream’s vision of ‘new’ guitar music.”31
Another work that is often thought of as a “Bream” piece is Tristram Cary’s Sonata for
Guitar Alone. Many guitarists believe this piece was written for Bream, but the score does not
include a dedication and is edited by John Duarte. Also, Bream neither recorded the piece nor is
there any mention of the piece in Tony Palmer’s A Life on the Road or Graham Wade’s The Art
of Julian Bream.
I have chosen to mention both Henze’s Royal Winter Music: Second Sonata and Michael
Berkeley’s Impromptu, but only briefly. Royal Winter Music: Second Sonata does bear a
dedication to Bream, but was edited by Reinbert Evers, and Bream’s involvement in the
compositional process was limited in comparison to his involvement in the compositional
evolution of Royal Winter Music: First Sonata. In an interview for this treatise David
Tanenbaum stated, “Bream did not think that the last movement [of Royal Winter Music II]
worked for the public. He thought, ‘it has something like 22 tempo changes’ and he said, 'I'm not
going to play it or record it as written,' and Henze said, 'OK, I'll get somebody else; it was a
rift.”32 Berkeley’s Impromptu was written as birthday gift to Julian Bream from the composer,
but does not bear a dedication on the title page and was edited and premiered by Anthea Gifford.
The piece is mentioned briefly in the section on Michael Berkeley’s Sonata in One Movement.
I have also chosen to exclude the three works recently commissioned by The Julian
Bream Trust. The works are: Brouwer’s Sonata No. 5 ‘Ars Combinatoria’ and Danzas Rituales y

30
Ibid.
31
Button, Stuart W., Julian Bream: The Foundations of a Musical Career, 83.
32
9
Festivas Vol. 2 and Harrison Birtwistle’s Beyond the White Hand–Construction with Guitar
Player.33 These works have been excluded because of the relative proximity of their composition
dates and initial performances–each of the works was premiered in 2014 or 2015. Due to this
proximity, there are no commercial recordings of the pieces or published scores currently
available for review.

33
Saba, Thérèse Wassily, “Brouwer Première at Wigmore Hall,” International Classical Guitar, accessed August
20, 2015, http://internationalclassicalguitar.com/2015/04/24/brouwer-premiere-at-wigmore-hall-london/.
10
CHAPTER 2
THE PIECES WRITTEN FOR JULIAN BREAM
Reginald Smith-Brindle – Nocturne (1946), El Polifemo de Oro (1956), Variants on Two

Themes of J. S. Bach (1970)
Reginald Smith-Brindle (1917-2003)
Born in Bamber Bridge in Lancashire, England on January 5th 1917, Reginald Smith-
Brindle was one of most mercurial British composers of the twentieth century. After his early
dreams of becoming an architect were spoiled by the Second World War, Brindle shifted his
focus to music, studying first in Wales at Bangor College and then at the Accademia Nazionale
di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Subsequently, he continued his studies privately with the Italian
composer Luigi Dallapiccolla. After spending several years in Italy, Smith-Brindle returned to
England to become a college professor, eventually settling at The University of Surrey. He
passed away on the 9th of September 2003 in Surrey.34
Smith-Brindle’s compositional output is difficult to categorize, primarily because his
style was ever changing. In a 1971 article written for Musical Times entitled The Music of
Reginald Smith-Brindle, Gerald Lerner claims “the tendency (in Smith-Brindle’s compositional
career) has been to advance his style from work to work, always under the influence of some
other composer.”35 As damning as this indictment may seem, Lerner later states that a “lasting
characteristic” of Brindle’s music is a penchant for melody even in works that contain
challenging harmonic content. Even though Smith-Brindle experimented in many styles, his
work shows a general linear progression described by the composer as being “from tonally
oriented serialism to the white sound of electronic music.”36

34
Gerald Larner and David C.F. Wright, “Smith Brindle, Reginald,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online
(Oxford University Press, n.d.), accessed August 20, 2015,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/26023.
35
Gerald Larner, “The Music of Reginald Smith Brindle,” The Musical Times 112, no. 1540 (June 1, 1971): 543–
545.
36
Ibid., 544.
11
Another hallmark of Reginald Smith Brindle’s compositional career was his total
immersion into a certain style until he felt he had achieved mastery. For example, in 1967 Smith-
Brindle wrote almost exclusively for percussion and became so proficient in the genre that he
wrote a book on the subject titled Contemporary Percussion.37 Although Gerald Larner asserts
that this dedication to many styles and immersion in varied subjects was merely an attempt to
find a style in which he could write successfully, it was certainly fortunate for guitarists: the
instrument was one of Smith-Brindle’s favored mediums and the relationship between Smith-
Brindle and the guitar produced a multitude of works, including a series of compositions called
the Guitarcosmos, several works for guitar ensembles and the three works for Julian Bream:
Nocturne, El Polifemo de Oro and Variants on Two Themes of J. S. Bach.38
Smith-Brindle and the Guitar
Smith-Brindle first heard the classical guitar during his time in the military, played by an
Italian prisoner of war. In his autobiography, he later stated:
One evening I heard a faint sound of music coming from their camp, and walking
among the prisoners, I found the source - a guitar player. […]. I found such rapid
cascades of sounds absolutely fascinating. I asked to look over the instrument,
and found it to be made in Catania, of rather poor materials, and with metal
strings. However, it did have one fine point - a beautiful scroll head in the violin
style, which gave it an illusory aesthetic character far beyond its real musical
qualities.39
Following this chance encounter, Smith-Brindle became a lifelong guitar aficionado. He

achieved a basic mastery of the instrument and his knowledge of the literature was
comprehensive. Smith-Brindle eventually became a close friend of Segovia.
In addition to the pieces he wrote for Julian Bream, Smith-Brindle composed prolifically
for the instrument. He understood how to compose full sounding works for the guitar without
surpassing its contrapuntal limitations and felt that modern music on the guitar was often thin in
texture. Those interested in Smith-Brindle’s thoughts on composing for the guitar, specifically

37
Larner and Wright, “Smith Brindle, Reginald.”
38
“Compositions,” Reginald Smith-Brindle, accessed November 12, 2015,
http://smithbrindle.com/compositions.htm.
39
Smith-Brindle, Reginald, “Reginald Smith Brindle: Autobiography,” Reginald Smith-Brindle, accessed September
10, 2015, http://smithbrindle.com/biographies.htm.
12
his thoughts on texture, should read his article The Composer’s Problems, which is reprinted in
the Fall 1990 issue of Guitar Review.40
Nocturne
Smith-Brindle’s Nocturne was the first piece written for Julian Bream. Bream later
recalled its composition saying, “the first piece that was written especially for me was composed
by Reginald Smith-Brindle who wrote a Nocturne for me as early as 1947.”41 The piece was
composed at the behest of Bream’s father, Henry Bream, in hope of creating a new repertoire of
English guitar music for his precociously talented son.42
Nocturne was composed early in Smith-Brindle’s career, and does not use serial
technique; stylistically, the piece has more in common with Debussy than Schoenberg. Nocturne
is composed in a loose ternary form with a larger than usual B section. The first phrase of the A
section, shown below in Example 1, shows Brindle’s use of planed major 7th and major triads in
various inversions with a chromatic melodic line in the middle voice. Of special importance is
the flowing melody in the upper voice that centers on E. In this theme, one hears the influence of
Debussy with a touch of the chromaticism that would later mark Brindle’s style.
Example 1: Smith-Brindle, Nocturne, mm. 1-5
Reginald Smith-Brindle NOCTURNE

Copyright © 1947 by Schott Music, Mainz, Germany
Copyright renewed
All Rights Reserved
Used by permission of European American Music Distributors Company, sole U. S. and
Canadian agent for Schott Music, Mainz, Germany

40
Smith-Brindle, Reginald, “The Composer’s Problem,” Guitar Review 83 (Fall 1990): 25–30.
41
42
Button, Stuart W., Julian Bream: The Foundations of a Musical Career, 84.
13
Near the close of the B section, Smith-Brindle sets the melody from the opening phrase
above another series of planed major triads with the open E and A strings providing a pedal
underneath, shown in Example 2. This excerpt, with its thick, strummed, dotted half note chords
is the dramatic climax of the piece. The B section soon gives way to the return of a slightly
varied A section. The piece ends with a five bar coda capped by a high E harmonic.
Example 2: Smith-Brindle, Nocturne, mm. 35-38
Reginald Smith-Brindle NOCTURNE

Copyright renewed
All Rights Reserved
El Polifemo de Oro
El Polifemo de Oro is the most widely performed and well-known guitar piece by
Reginald Smith-Brindle. The piece certainly owes its popularity to the success of Julian Bream’s
1967 album 20th Century Guitar, one of the most popular classical guitar releases of all time, on
which it was the opening selection. In the liner notes to 20th Century Guitar, John Warrack states
that El Polifemo de Oro is one of the few pieces on the album that references the guitar’s Spanish
heritage with its inspiration being drawn from the Garcia Lorca poem of the same name.43
El Polifemo de Oro has been the subject of many articles and treatises. For guitarists
interested in delving into the work more thoroughly, Paul Lebanc’s dissertation for the
University of North Texas titled Structure and Performance of El Polifemo de Oro44 provides a
thorough analysis of the piece and the compositional techniques used to compose it. For those

43
Julian Bream, Classical Guitar Anthology - Julian Bream: The Complete RCA Album Collection. ([S.l.]: Sony
Music Entertainment, 2013), Disc. 12.
44
Paul Gregory LeBlanc, “Structure and Performance of‘ El Polifemo de Oro’ for Solo Guitar by Reginald Smith
Brindle” (University of North Texas, 1993).
14
interested in a shorter analysis, Taylor Greene’s Julian Bream’s 20th Century Guitar: An Album’s
Influence on the Modern Guitar Repertoire45 provides a brief, yet accurate analysis.
Variants on Two Themes of J. S. Bach
Variants on Two Themes of J. S. Bach was written in 1970 for Julian Bream and was
commissioned by the Guild for the Promotion of Welsh Music, with funds provided by the
Welsh Arts Council.46 Bream performed El Polifemo de Oro often throughout his concert career,
but it is unknown whether Bream performed the piece in concert. Bream never recorded Variants
and, currently, there is no commercial recording of the piece.
In the introduction to the score, Brindle states that the piece is based on “the two themes
of J. S. Bach […] B-A-C-H and the fugue subject of the G minor fugue, Book 1 of the ’48.”47
The first theme, shown in Figure 1, uses the pitches B flat – A – C – B which spell Bach’s
surname in the German spelling of the musical alphabet. The second theme, shown in Figure 2,
is the fugue subject from Bach’ G minor fugue BWV 861.
Figure 1: B—A—C—H Motive
Figure 2: J. S. Bach, Fugue Subject from BWV 861

45
Taylor Jonathon Greene, “Julian Bream’s 20th Century Guitar: An Album’s Influence on the Modern Guitar
Repertoire” (University of California Riverside, 2011).
46
Reginald Smith Brindle and Johann Sebastian Bach, Variants on Two Themes of J.S. Bach: Guitar Solo (London ;
New York: Edition Peters, 1973).
47
Ibid.
15
Variants is composed in five movements: Poco andante, Vivo, Lento, Allegretto and
Poco adagio. In each of the five movements, Smith-Brindle explores Bach’s themes using
extended chromaticism and serial techniques.
In Poco andante, Smith-Brindle uses elements of both themes in a Fugue-like setting,
freely composed around Bach’s themes. The fugue subject, shown below in Example 3, uses the
intervals found in the B—A—C—H motive to generate the first four notes. This fugue subject is
presented in inversion beginning in measure 3, and is treated like a tone-row.
Example 3: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Poco adagio,” mm. 1-4

Music by Reginald Smith-Brindle
© Copyright 1973 by C. F. Peters Corporation.
All Rights Reserved.
Vivo and Lento explore elements of the Bach themes even more freely than Poco adagio.
Vivo is characterized by its constant motion and frequent use of the B—A—C—H motive, and
proliferations of the motive that feature stepwise or chromatic motion. Example 4 shows a
prominent statement of material derived from this motive. Lento is a slow, atmospheric
movement that features elements from both motives, usually in the form of sixteenth note
outbursts. Example 5 and 6 show how both motives are used in this movement. Example 5 is
derived from the B—A—C—H motive, and Example 6 is derived from the G minor Fugue
subject.
Example 4: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Vivo,” mm. 4

16
Example 5: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Lento,” mm. 1

Example 6: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Lento,” mm. 12-13

The fourth movement Allegretto is characterized by the use of repeated quartal chord
clusters with material derived from the Bach themes in the bass; an example is provided in
Example 7. The fifth movement Poco adagio explores the rhythmic material from the G minor
fugue subject, and ends on a mysterious B-flat that resolves to the low E in the first chord of the
final movement.
17
Example 7: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Allegretto,” mm. 2-5

The final movement Adagio maestoso incorporates elements from each movement: the
fugue subject from the first movment; two snippets of the rapid passagework from the second;
harmonies from the third; some of the quartal clusters from the fourth; and the rhythmic material
from the fifth. After hinting at the B—A—C—H motive rather cheekily, the piece ends with an
E major chord.
Performer’s Notes
Because Smith-Brindle knew the guitar intimately, it is of no surprise that these three
pieces are written idiomatically for the instrument. In his autobiography, the composer recounts
learning the common fingering shapes on the guitar through transcribing the music of Ponce and
many others from Segovia’s recordings.48 “There is one secret for success [when writing for
guitar],” Smith-Brindle states in Guitar Review, “ [one] can write single-strand music which
suggests a number of parts, and therefore sounds richer and more complete than a single
voice.”49

48
Smith-Brindle, Reginald, “Reginald Smith Brindle: Autobiography.”
49
Smith-Brindle, Reginald, “The Composer’s Problem,” 27.
18
Each of Reginald Smith-Brindle’s pieces for Julian Bream is written idiomatically for the
guitar, although each presents a different level of difficulty for the performer. Nocturne, the
simplest of the three, is nearly free from difficulty besides the occasional sixteenth note passage.
El Polifemo de Oro has a few more difficulties: repeated note and chord figures; harmonics; and
tambura. The final movement requires velocity and facility with repeated notes on the bass
strings.
Variants on Two Themes of J. S. Bach is the most challenging piece of the three both
technically and musically. First, the performer will need a good deal of insight and imagination
to bring out the Bach themes successfully and to craft a compelling performance. Second, the
piece contains several technical challenges: velocity in movements II, IV and V; facility with
slurs of all types; harmonics; and the use of a wide range of colors and dynamics.
Lennox Berkeley – Sonatina, Op. 52 No. 1 (1957)
“20th Century English music would be seriously incomplete without [Berkeley’s] work.”
-Peter Dickinson50
Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989)
The only son in an aristocratic family, Lennox Berkeley was born in Boars Hill, Oxford
on the 12th of May 1903. His father, Hastings George Fitz-Harding Berkeley was a Captain in
The Royal Navy and his grandfather George Lennox Rawdon was the Seventh Earl of Berkeley
and Viscount Dursley. Of Berkeley’s immediate familial relations, it was his mother who had the
most lasting impact on the young Berkeley’s disposition: her heritage was French and Scottish
and Lennox Berkeley would always have a sympathy for French culture that profoundly
impacted his musical output. Although Berkeley was born into an aristocratic family, he was
born before his parents married and was not eligible to inherit his father’s title and estate.51

50
Peter Dickinson and Lennox Berkeley, “Berkeley at 75,” The Musical Times 119, no. 1623 (May 1, 1978): 1.
51
Peter Dickinson and Joan Redding, “Berkeley, Sir Lennox,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford
University press, n.d.), accessed August 20, 2015,
19
Berkeley was educated at Gresham’s in Oxford, a school that would later produce both
W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten, and eventually Merton College, Oxford where he studied
French, Old French and Philology.52 Berkeley had shown an interest in music as early as 1906,
after being exposed to many of Schubert’s Lieder as sung by his aunt. Upon graduation from
Oxford, Berkeley met the French composer Maurice Ravel who reviewed a number of the
younger composer’s compositions. Ravel found the works showed great promise, and
immediately suggested that Berkeley seek the expertise of Nadia Boulanger at the Paris
Conservatory.53
Berkeley was profoundly influenced by Boulanger, and she remained his primary source
of inspiration until 1932 when, largely by chance, Berkeley met Benjamin Britten in Barcelona.
“I was one of his earliest admirers,” Berkeley said of Britten, “As a young man his musical gifts
were amazing—it was not only the invention of music but an instinctive comprehension of how
to organize it that struck me. He was already a fine craftsman in his early 20s. He had a strong
influence on me.”54 The young composers soon collaborated on the orchestral piece Mont Juic, a
suite of Catalan dances in memory of Peter Burra, a close friend of Peter Pears, Britten’s
companion.55 Berkeley and Britten eventually shared a lodging at Snape in Aldeburgh, until
Britten’s pacifism led him to flee Britain for America with Peter Pears in 1939.
Berkeley is largely remembered as a master craftsman with an ear for miniatures and a
strong melodic gift. Although he experimented with atonality, it never became central to his
style. “My music has always been fundamentally tonal, though it is true that I felt the need to
explore more dissonant harmony … I think I have managed to incorporate it in my usual style in
some of my later music,”56 Berkeley recalled in a 1978 interview with Peter Dickinson for The
Musical Times. Among his more popular works are: Serenade for Strings, Divertimento in B-flat,
Missa Brevis, Sonatina for Treble Recorder (or flute) and piano and Sonatina for Guitar, Op. 52
No. 1.57

52
Ibid.
53
Ibid.
54
Dickinson and Berkeley, “Berkeley at 75,” 2.
55
Dickinson and Redding, “Berkeley, Sir Lennox.”
56
Dickinson and Berkeley, “Berkeley at 75,” 411.
57
Scotland, Tony, “Lennox Berkeley Biography by Tony Scotland,” accessed August 20, 2015,
http://www.lennoxberkeley.org.uk/biography_by_tony_scotland.php.
20
In 1943, Berkeley began work as Director of Orchestral Programming for the BBC where
he met Freda Bernstein who would later become his wife. Together they raised three sons,
including the composer Michael Berkeley who wrote Sonata in One Movement for Julian Bream
in 1982. Lennox Berkeley was professor of composition at The Royal Academy of Music from
1946 until 1968, where he mentored many successful composers. Among his students were
Richard Rodney Bennett, Brian Ferneyhough and Nicholas Maw.58 Over the course of his long
career, Berkeley was honored with many awards and accolades including an honorary doctorate
from Oxford University and knighthood in 1974. Berkeley composed steadily until 1983 when
he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He died in London on the 26th of December 1989.59
Berkeley and the Guitar
Including the Sonatina, Lennox Berkeley composed five works for the guitar: Quatre
pieces pour la guitare, Songs of the Half Light, Theme and Variations, Op. 77, Sonatina, Op. 52
No. 1, and the Guitar Concerto. Quatre pieces was written for Segovia, presumably while
Berkeley was a student in Paris, although the maestro never performed them. The Songs of the
Half Light were written for Julian Bream and Peter Pears, and were recorded on the RCA album
Music for Voice and Guitar. Theme and Variations, Op. 77 was dedicated to the Italian guitarist,
composer and scholar Angelo Gilardino, and the Sonatina and Guitar Concerto were written for
Julian Bream.
These works span Berkeley’s entire career, giving guitarists a unique opportunity to
explore the whole of the composer’s oeuvre. In an interview conducted for this treatise, Angelo
Gilardino commented on how the three solo pieces, Quatre pieces pour la guitar, Sonatina, Op.
52 No. 1 and Theme and Variations, Op. 77 fit within Berkeley’s compositional output:
They reflect three seasons of the composer’s life. Quatre pieces are the work of a young
musician who has already mastered the musical tools and who is full of enthusiasm; their
connection with Spanish culture is open. Sonatina is a work of maturity, which shows the
composer’s balance between the Neoclassical mainstream and his personal, very direct
way of shifting from joy to meditation without breaking a perfect unity of style; contrasts

58
Ibid.
59
21
with no conflict. Theme and variations is a very subtle essay of sheer musical wisdom
and of mild, peaceful poetic memory: the work of a great old artist.60
The Guitar Concerto, Op. 88 written for Julian Bream, Berkeley’s last concerto, is regarded by
Berkeley scholar Peter Dickinson as one of the most successful works in Berkeley’s late style;61
a style that incorporates aspects of atonality within Berkeley’s traditional idiom.
Sonatina, Op 52 No. 1
In a review of the Sonatina in the January 1960 issue of Music & Letters, the reviewer
Ian Kemp praises Lennox Berkeley’s “lyrical and picturesque gift.” However, in the closing
paragraph he also provides a veiled criticism of Berkeley’s basically conservative idiom by
praising Berkeley’s formal and technical success in the Rondo “which also has an appealing tune
in it (without which, of course, Berkeley could not have written it).”62
This assessment of the Sonatina is absolutely correct. The first and last movements are
veritable models of formal precision and both feature lyrical, pastoral melodies. The second
movement, however, presents a good deal of harmonic experimentation of which the review
makes no mention.
The second movement begins with a short five-note motive, shown in Example 8, which
returns throughout the movement. Berkeley sets a precedent by ending the motive with a leading
tone resolving by half step. As the motive recurs, he does not always resolve the leading tone as
expected, and tension is created throughout the movement as the listener awaits a statement of
the motive in its original form. Berkeley stretches the parameters of the motive itself, almost to a
breaking point, before dissipating the tension at the end by resolving the leading tone up by step.
Another note-worthy feature of this movement is the use of quartal and quintal harmony, which
sharply contrasts Berkeley’s conservative harmonic style at this time.

60
Gilardino, Angelo, interview by McCallie, Michael, E-mail, August 10, 2015.
61
62
Ian Kemp, “Review,” Music & Letters 41, no. 1 (January 1, 1960): 97.
22
Example 8: L. Berkeley, Sonatina, Op. 52 No. 1, “Lento,” mm. 1
Sonatina For Guitar

Music by Lennox Berkeley
© Copyright 1958, 1993 Chester Music Limited.
All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.
Printed by permission of Chester Music Limited.
Performer’s Note
Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina for Guitar is among the most accessible pieces in the Bream
repertoire for the listener. It is one of Berkeley’s most widely performed pieces and, according to
The Lennox Berkeley Society, has appeared on CD at least 24 times since 1991.63 The debut
recording of the piece was released in 1960 on Julian Bream’s debut recording for RCA records
The Art of Julian Bream.64
As for programming, the piece is very melodic and tuneful except for the second
movement, which requires extra attention from the listener. Bream performed the piece often,
especially up until the late 1960s when he began to favor more recent compositions. Typically,
Bream programmed the piece at the beginning or middle of the second half of a performance,
often accompanied by more traditional Spanish pieces, but sometimes alongside other modern
pieces. 65
“Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina is a difficult work for the player,” John Duarte said in a
review of The Art of Julian Bream for BMG,66 and throughout, the piece does provide many
challenges. The first and third movements are the most difficult, and passages in each stand out
for their level of difficulty. In the first movement, extended scale passages are juxtaposed with

63
Daly, Christopher, “Sonatina for Guitar Op. 52 No. 1 – Some Recommended Recordings,” The Lennox Berkeley
Society, accessed August 24, 2015, http://www.lennoxberkeley.org.uk/sonatina_for_guitar.php.
64
Bream, Classical guitar anthology Julian Bream, vol. 1.
65
Wade, Graham, The Art of Julian Bream (Blaydon on Tyne, U. K.: Ashley Mark Publishing Company, 2008).
66
Ibid., 80.
23
rasgueado figures. There is an awkward planed chord figure on the closing page of the first
movement that is of special difficulty.
The third movement is widely known among guitarists for its level of difficulty. To
perform successfully, it requires a mastery of rasgueado technique, scale playing and tremolo. If
the piece is performed at a proper tempo, the scale passages are especially difficult for the
performer.
Hans Werner Henze – Drei tentos (1958), Royal Winter Music: First Sonata (1976), Royal
Winter Music: Second Sonata (1980)
Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012)
Hans Werner Henze’s early life was deeply impacted by the social and political upheaval
of World War II. “In his memoirs,” Virginia Palmer-Fuschel states in her article on Henze for
Grove Music Online, “[Henze recalls] how fascist, anti-communist and anti-Semitic literature
gradually filled his father’s bookshelves, replacing banned books by Jewish and Christian
authors.”67 Henze’s father, a school teacher and amateur musician, initially encouraged his son
to take up the piano, but later discouraged him from becoming a professional musician. The
trauma of living under the Nazi regime during his childhood would exert a lasting influence on
Henze’s compositions.68
After much struggle, Henze began to study music composition with Wolfgang Fortner at
the Heidelberg Evangelisches Kirchenmusikalisches Institut. Palmer-Fuschel says of Henze’s
time as a student, “under Fortner’s disciplined instruction, he gained a solid foundation in Fuxian
counterpoint, score reading, instrumentation and music history.”69 Fortner also introduced Henze
to the music of Hindemith, Bartók and Stravinsky, whom he greatly admired.70 Soon, Henze
would begin to experiment with 12-tone technique.

67
Virginia Palmer-Füchsel, “Henze, Hans Werner,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University
Press, n.d.), accessed August 20, 2015,
68
Ibid.
69
Ibid.
70
Ibid.
24
Henze’s style can be difficult to characterize because each new work often represents a
change of approach or new compositional interest. However, Henze’s overriding style is
characterized by the juxtaposition of modern compositional techniques– serialism and extended
chromaticism–with a romantic and dramatic temperament. His primary works include:
Kammermusik 1958, the 10 Symphonies and several operas, the most famous of which are Venus
and Adonis, The Bassarids, Der Prinz von Homburg and Elegy for Young Lovers with a libretto
by W. H. Auden.71 Those interested in a complete and entertaining biography of Henze should
acquire a copy of his autobiography Bohemian Fifths.72
Drei Tentos
An encounter between Germany and Greece in the vision of a poet who has clouds of madness
around his head, and who stammers in fragments, with beautiful, seemingly dislocated phrases.
-Hans Werner Henze on Kammermusik 195873
Kammermusik 1958, which contains the Drei Tentos, was officially dedicated to
Benjamin Britten. The Drei Tentos, which are frequently excerpted and performed alone, have
become an integral part of the modern guitar repertoire and are so firmly associated with Bream
that they must be briefly included here. In his autobiography Bohemian Fifths, Henze states
Kammermusik was, “introduced by two English artists, the tenor Peter Pears and the guitarist
Julian Bream.”74 Bream’s playing was almost certainly the model for the composition of Drei
Tentos.
Of Kammermusik 1958, Henze states:
Its twelve movements may be divided into three sections for voice, clarinet, horn,
bassoon, string quartet and guitar, three for instrumental septet alone (without
guitar), three for tenor and guitar and three for guitar alone.75

71
Ibid.
72
Henze, Hans W. and Spencer, Stewart, Bohemian Fifths: An Autobiography (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton
University Press, 1999).
73
Vivien Schweitzer, “Hans Werner Henze’s ‘Kammermusik 1958’ Gets a New Staging,” The New York Times,
September 2, 2015, accessed September 7, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/arts/music/hans-werner-
henzes-kammermusik-1958-gets-a-new-staging.html.
74
Henze, Hans W. and Spencer, Stewart, Bohemian Fifths: An Autobiography, 155.
75
Ibid.
25
More important is Henze’s description of the Drei Tentos for solo guitar:
The last three movements [...] under the title Three Tentos, they feature in the
repertory of virtually every professional guitarist who considers himself worthy of
the name. Like the other sections of the score, these three tentos or ricercares
sound much as I imagine Greek music must have sounded and are characterized
by the interplay of thematic structures and harmonic textures found throughout
the piece as a whole: each of them functions as a nucleus that provides material
for the rest of the piece.
Guitarists who would like a more detailed analysis of Drei Tentos should acquire a copy of
Jonathan Greene’s Julian Bream’s 20th Century Guitar: An Album’s Influence on the Modern
Guitar Repertoire.76
Royal Winter Music: First Sonata
In his autobiography Bohemian Fifths, Hans Werner Henze recalls Julian Bream’s
request for a guitar work:
Bream said, ‘What the Hammerklavier Sonata is to pianists and the keyboard
repertory, the Royal Winter Music must be to the guitar.' He wanted to explore the
innermost essence of the instrument with me and see it become the most colorful
and fascinating of our time.’77
In response to Bream’s request, Henze composed the massive Royal Winter Music: A Sonata on
Shakespearean Characters.
The piece is composed in six movements, each movement is meant to depict a character,
or entire scene, from the plays of Shakespeare: Gloucester; Romeo and Juliet; Ariel; Ophelia;
Touchstone, Audrey and William; and finally Oberon. In his liner notes to Franz Halasz’s
towering recording of this work on the Naxos label, David Trustlove says Henze stated, “the
dramatis personae…enter through the sound of the guitar as if it were a curtain.”78
For guitarists seeking an extensive formal and structural analysis of Royal Winter Music,
Michael David Harding’s Doctoral Dissertation A Performer’s Analysis of Hans Werner Henze’s

76
Greene, “Julian Bream’s 20th Century Guitar.”
77
Henze, Hans W. and Spencer, Stewart, Bohemian Fifths: An Autobiography, 344.
78
Liner notes from Franz Halász et al., Henze: Guitar Music, Vol. 1 ([S.l.]: Naxos Rights International, 2010).
26
Royal Winter Music, Sonata I79 should be required reading. Harding provides relevant
biographical and historical context as well as a detailed analysis of each movement.
Royal Winter Music: Second Sonata

Although Julian Bream neither edited nor performed the Second Sonata of Henze’s Royal
Winter Music, and guitarist David Tanenbaum has stated that the piece’s creation caused a “rift”
in the relationship between Bream and Henze,80 a piece of its size and stature certainly deserves
a brief introduction in this survey. Like Royal Winter Music: First Sonata, the Second Sonata
presents musical portraits of various Shakespearean characters; in this case Sir Andrew
Aguecheek from Twelfth Night, Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Mad Lady
Macbeth from Macbeth.
The Second Sonata is of special significance due to its high level of difficulty. Instead of
working with Julian Bream, Henze decided to employ the talents of the young guitarist Reinbert
Evers during the editing process. Although a competent guitarist, Evers’ reticence to challenge
Henze on difficult passages leaves some of the work nearly unplayable. “The piece is
particularly difficult to play,” Henze said in the preface to score of the Second Sonata, “and
many a guitar player will approach it with fear and trembling, just as we ourselves would not
care to cross the path of Lady Macbeth, above all not now in her present state.”81 Eliot Fisk said
of the piece, “in the Second Sonata, he notated all this stuff that's completely physically
impossible to hold. Reinbert Evers was the one working with Henze, and he didn't put his foot
down enough.”82
As with Royal Winter Music: First Sonata, the Second Sonata presents the player with
nearly every possible technical difficulty: velocity; awkward chord shapes; wide ranges of color
and texture; and a proliferation of harmonics. Although there many difficult sections in Royal
Winter Music: Second Sonata, the difficult stretch in the passage shown below in Example 9 is
typical of the difficulties found throughout the piece. Henze asks the guitarist to stretch the left

79
Harding, Michael David, “A Performer’s Analysis Hans Werner Henze’s Royal Winter Music, Sonata I”
(University of Arizona, 1997).
80
81
Hans Werner Henze, Royal Winter Music: Second Sonata on Shakespearean Characters: For Guitar = Zweite
Sonate über Gestalten von Shakespeare: Für Gitarre, ed. Reinbert Evers, Gitarren-Archiv GA 473 (Mainz ; New
York: Schott, 1983).
82
Fisk, Eliot, interview by McCallie, Michael, Telephone, August 26, 2015.
27
hand over a span of six frets while playing chords in the top voice and to play and to
subsequently reach an additional note with the only remaining finger.
Example 9: Henze, Royal Winter Music II, “Mad Lady Macbeth,” mm. 270-271
Hans Werner Henze ROYAL WINTER MUSIC II, Second Sonata on Shakespearean Characters
Copyright renewed
All Rights Reserved
Performer’s Note
When asked in an interview for this treatise how a guitarist might prepare to perform
Royal Winter Music, First Sonata, David Tanenbaum commented on many different aspects of
preparing a performance. Tanenbaum was one of Henze’s preferred performers of Royal Winter
Music, and Tanenbaum played the piece for the composer on numerous occasions. His
commentary on this piece is especially significant. First, on whether or not to play from the
manuscript or the printed score he said:
[Henze] made a very strong point to say “look, I know you guitarists like to get
these manuscripts and play from the manuscript,” and he said “I really advise you
in general not to do that.” He said, “when we composers publish something, what
that publication represents is the final effort and what we want the world to see.
You may get a hold of a manuscript and you could certainly study with that the
process where that became a publication, but it's not fair to composers to just
suddenly play from the manuscript; that's not what I want out in the world. What I
want out in the world is what I put out in the world.” That was interesting, and I
think it's something for guitarists to think about.83
On researching the programmatic aspects he said:

83
28
The first thing in approaching those pieces is to not be too distracted by the
language, but to get into the personalities of the characters. The first thing, I think,
is to read the Shakespeare.
It just turns out that he decided to begin and end the cycle with mad royalty. The
first movement is the mad king, Richard III, and the last is Mad Lady Macbeth.
So, the language for those are the most harsh and dissonant and difficult for the
audience, but it’s just language to reflect these characters.84
Tanenbaum also had advice on making the piece compelling for audiences:
I think talking and writing program notes really helps audiences. I get a lot of
feedback that people really like hearing about what they're about to hear. I went as
far as memorizing the Gloucester opening monologue (‘Now is the winter of our
discontent’), and I would say it before playing Gloucester. I would read the
monologue.85
These three pieces provide the guitarist with a number of musical and technical
challenges. Drei Tentos sounds deceptively simple and does not contain many of the typical
challenges of the Bream pieces like harmonics or extended techniques. Drei Tentos were not
edited by Julian Bream and the chief difficulties lie in achieving a legato in the melodic lines due
to unidiomatic chord shapes and performing the fast passages in the second tento accurately.
Royal Winter Music: First Sonata is one of the most challenging pieces in the entire
guitar repertoire. The piece includes nearly every possible difficulty: challenging rhythms;
harmonics of all kinds; a tremendous range of dynamics and color; extended use of percussion
effects; difficult chord shapes; and, of course, it requires great imagination to bring the
Shakespearean characters to life. In an interview David Tanenbaum commented, “it’s truly a
monumental task.”86

84
Ibid.
85
Ibid.
86
Ibid.
29
Denis ApIvor – Variations, Op. 29 (1959)
Denis ApIvor (1916-1994)

Along with Humphrey Searle and Elizabeth Luytens, Denis ApIvor was one of the first
British composers to use serial techniques in his compositions. ApIvor composed in this style
until the mid-1980s, when he became disillusioned with serialism and began to simplify his
music.87 Although an Anesthesiologist by trade,88 ApIvor composed prolifically and is best
known for his compositions for the guitar, including Saeta and Variations, Op. 29, and his works
with voice: the three-act chamber opera Yerma (1956) and The Dylan Thomas Settings (1960).89
ApIvor and Bream
Denis ApIvor composed twenty-two original pieces for guitar; this oeuvre includes two
pieces for guitar and voice, a handful of guitar duos and trios, three large ensemble pieces, six
orchestral pieces with guitar and eight solo compositions,90 and is one of the largest bodies of
work for the instrument from the same composer written using serial techniques. A guitarist
himself, ApIvor studied with both the lutenist Diana Poulton and the guitarist and poet John
Roberts.91 ApIvor found serialism suited the guitar and published a book on writing serial works
for the instrument titled An Introduction to Serial Composition for Guitarists (1982).92
ApIvor’s first guitar composition was the Concertino, Op. 26 (1954), which was
premiered by Julian Bream. Bream found the piece appealing and soon commissioned
Variations, Op. 29. Bream commissioned the Variations, however he did not premiere them.
This task was left to guitarist Isabel Smith, who gave the premiere in 1968.93 In fact, it is
doubtful Bream performed the Variations in public and there is no recording of him playing

87
Marrington, Mark, “Denis ApIvor and the Classical Guitar,” Guitar Review, no. 132 (Fall 2006): 1.
88
Ibid.
89
Lyn Davies, “ApIvor, Denis,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press, n.d.),
accessed August 24, 2015,
90
Marrington, Mark, “Denis ApIvor and the Classical Guitar,” 13–14.
91
Ibid., 2.
92
Ibid., 10.
93
Ibid., 4.
30
them. Variations, Op. 29 marked the end of ApIvor’s professional collaboration with Julian
Bream, but he continued to compose for the instrument throughout his career.
Variations, Op. 29
Like Bennett’s Impromptus, ApIvor’s Variations, Op. 29 are an example of serial

composition on the guitar that is both inviting and accessible to the performer and audience. In
his article “Denis ApIvor and the Classical Guitar” published in the Fall 2006 issue of Guitar
Review, ApIvor scholar Mark Marrington details how this accessibility is achieved: “ApIvor’s
approach in most of the Variations is to construct his music around particular models of the
repertoire as it would have been introduced to him through his teacher John Roberts.”94 In short,
ApIvor uses the compositional models of composers like Tarrega, Sor and Giuliani, especially in
their pedagogical studies, but applies his own rigorous, serial compositional style.
In his article for Guitar Review, Mark Marrington describes ApIvor’s compositional
process in greater detail:
These nine short pieces provided an ideal opportunity for the composer to explore
the possibilities of the instrument in a solo context, particularly from the point of
view of its contrapuntal capacity [...]. The second variation is a tremolo study
whose influence is most likely to have been Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra,
while the third and eighth are clearly intended to evoke the rhythmic character of
the various transcribed dances of Albéniz and Granados. The arpeggio-based
textures of the fourth and fifth variations are quite obviously modelled on the
studies and light pieces of such nineteenth-century guitar virtuosi as Sor and
Giuliani. In the sixth and seventh variations ApIvor appears to be essaying
Baroque style – the former, in its contrapuntal density, which is reminiscent of the
guitar transcriptions of lute music by Bach, and the latter in its dotted rhythms and
fantasia-like character. Only the first and final pieces are more abstract and less
obviously related to any particular model.95
The pitches in ApIvor’s Variations, Op. 29 are serialized using Schoenberg’s system of
twelve tone serialism. The prime form of the row is stated in the opening bars of the piece,
shown in Example 10, and is restated in measure 2 clarifying the order of pitches placed in

94
Ibid., 5.
95
Ibid.
31
chords. With these pitches, I have a constructed a twelve tone matrix for analyzing the piece,
shown in Figure 3.
Example 10: ApIvor, Variations, Op. 29, “Poco lento: Affetuoso,” mm. 1
Denis ApIvor VARIATIONS Op. 29

Copyright renewed
All Rights Reserved

I6 I4 I7 I3 I9 I5 I2 I11 I10 I1 I8 I0
P6 6 4 7 3 9 5 2 11 10 1 8 0 R6
P8 8 6 9 5 11 7 4 1 0 3 10 2 R8
P5 5 3 6 2 8 4 1 10 9 0 7 11 R5
P9 9 7 10 6 0 8 5 2 1 4 11 3 R9
P3 3 1 4 0 6 2 11 8 7 10 5 9 R3
P7 7 5 8 4 10 6 3 0 11 2 9 1 R7
P10 10 8 11 7 1 9 6 3 2 5 0 4 R10
P1 1 11 2 10 4 0 9 6 5 8 3 7 R1
P2 2 0 3 11 5 1 10 7 6 9 4 8 R2
P11 11 9 0 8 2 10 7 4 3 6 1 5 R11
P4 4 2 5 1 7 3 0 9 8 11 6 10 R4
P0 0 10 1 9 3 11 8 5 4 7 2 6 R0
RI6 RI4 RI7 RI3 RI9 RI5 RI2 RI11 RI10 RI1 RI8 RI0
Figure 3: Apivor, Variations, Op. 29 Twelve-Tone Matrix
32
Performer’s Note
ApIvor’s Variations, Op. 29 are, along with the Bennett Impromptus, among the best
introductions to twelve tone serialism in the guitar repertoire. ApIvor’s decision to model each
variation on pedagogical and traditional models of composition for the guitar is truly novel and
mitigates the complexity of the material. Unlike many of the pieces in the Bream repertoire,
especially Henze’s Royal Winter Music, the texture is sparse throughout. The texture never
exceeds three voices, which makes the guitar sound rich and full without exceeding the
contrapuntal limitations of the instrument.
Technically, while not for the beginner, ApIvor’s Variations do not pose any significant
difficulties. However, for the intermediate guitarist, the tremolo in Variation II and the
simultaneous execution of harmonics and natural notes in the final Variation may prove
challenging. There are also several meter changes in the piece and some of the rhythms might
prove difficult for a guitarist who is not accustomed to pieces from the late twentieth century.
Currently, there is no commercial recording of Variations, Op. 29, and the score,
published by Schott, while not out of print, is difficult to acquire in the United States. Those
interested in exploring Denis ApIvor’s guitar works more thoroughly should consult the scholar
Mark Marrington’s valuable article “Denis ApIvor and the Classical Guitar.” The article is
widely available and was published in the Fall 2006 issue of Guitar Review.96
Benjamin Britten – Nocturnal, Op. 70 after John Dowland (1963)

“The Britten Nocturnal is a masterpiece.”
-Richard Rodney Bennett97
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Benjamin Britten is perhaps the most significant British composer of the early and mid-
twentieth century, and his music has enjoyed a success outside of Britain that few of his British
predecessors or contemporaries have achieved. Britten’s biography and accounts of the lasting

96
Mark Marrington, “Denis Apivor and the Classical Guitar.”
97
33
significance of his works have been detailed in multiple locations including Humphrey
Carpenter’s Benjamin Britten: A Biography98 and Peter Evan’s The Music of Benjamin Britten.99
Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft on the 22nd of November 1913 and showed a gift
for music almost immediately. By the age of 10, he had composed nearly one hundred pieces of
music and had begun studying composition with the British composer Frank Bridge. He attended
The Royal College of Music and soon after graduation met the poet W. H. Auden and the tenor
Peter Pears, two individuals who had a profound impact on the young composer’s life and
compositional career. Auden became a close friend and librettist for many of Britten’s works and
Pears was to become Britten’s lifelong companion and artistic muse.100
From the outset of his career, the cornerstone of Britten’s compositional style was his
prodigious technical facility. Upon reviewing Britten’s music during a visit to New York after
Britten and Pears had taken up residence in the United States in 1939, the American composer
Aaron Copland marveled at Britten’s immaculate craftsmanship, but said the young composer
must, “search deeper for a more personal, more interesting idiom … good craftsmanship
is not enough.”101 Britten took this advice to heart and, during his American sojourn from 1939
until 1942, he explored the inner turmoil stemming from feelings of both shame and liberation
from his homosexuality.
After this period of artistic growth, Britten returned to England in 1942 and was anxious
to claim his place among the great British composers of the past and present. He found much
lacking in the British master Ralph Vaughn Williams’ pastorale style of composition and instead
turned to masters of the past for inspiration. Britten was especially fond of the music of John
Dowland and Henry Purcell; Purcell particularly, in whose settings of the English language
Britten found, “a brilliance, freedom and vitality that have been curiously rare [since Purcell’s
death].”102
“I am a composer of opera, and that is what I am going to be, throughout,” Britten once
said to the young composer Michael Tippett.103 True to his word, Britten produced a number of

98
Carter, Humphrey, Benjamin Britten: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1993).
99
Evans, Peter, The Music of Benjamin Britten (Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1979).
100
Philip Brett et al., “Britten, Benjamin,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press,
n.d.), accessed August 20, 2015,
101
Ibid.
102
Ibid.
103
Ibid.
34
successful operas including Billy Budd, The Rape of Lucretia, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and,
most importantly, Peter Grimes. He composed successfully in many genres, however these are
the works that secure his legacy as one of the greatest British composers of the twentieth century.
Britten, Bream, and Peter Pears
“I was invited to Aldeburgh to play the guitar with an ensemble,” Bream said, recalling
his first meeting with Britten, “[and during the concert] there was a huge draft and [all my music]
came off the music stand, and then suddenly somebody jumped up from the front row and sorted
out my problem. And I looked up and there it was—there he was, it was Benjamin
Britten.”104After this serendipitous first meeting, Bream was invited to a concert after-party
where he was formally introduced to both Britten and Peter Pears. Pears asked if Bream might
like to accompany him in an informal performance of a few Elizabethan lute songs, and, after the
young guitarist passed the “audition,” the two formed a professional duo.105
Pears and Bream would go on to concertize extensively and to produce three albums for
RCA records: Music for Voice and Guitar (1965), which contains new music written expressly
for the duo by William Walton, Benjamin Britten, Matyas Seiber and Peter Racine Fricker;
Julian Bream in Concert (1965), an arrangement of lute solos and songs; and Elizabethan Lute
Songs (1970) which includes the music of Dowland and others, culminating in a stirring
performance of Come, heavy sleep. Perhaps the most historically significant of these recordings
is Music for Voice and Guitar, which contains Britten’s first composition for the guitar, Songs
from the Chinese.106
Although Bream found his musical partnership with Peter Pears deeply artistically
satisfying, he soon set his sights on procuring a solo for the guitar from the pen of Benjamin
Britten.107 Britten must have found Bream’s playing attractive: he had not only approved of
Bream’s partnership with Peter Pears, Britten’s own recordings as Pears’ accompanist prove him
to hold similar virtues as a performer. On Britten and Pears’ quite justly celebrated recording of

104
105
Ibid.
106
Bream, Classical guitar anthology Julian Bream, disc. 7.
107
35
Schubert’s Winterreise,108 Britten exhibits several of the hallmarks of Julian Bream’s playing
style: a total command of phrasing and musical line; a remarkable gift for creating a unique
atmosphere and character for each piece; and a recognition of the value of pursuing the musical
idea over absolute technical perfection.
The stage was certainly set for Britten to begin writing a guitar piece for Bream, but there
were several complications. “I asked him originally in the mid-fifties, if he would write a solo
piece for me,” Bream told Tony Palmer in A Life on the Road, “he said he would, although in
fact I waited almost ten years for it.”109 Britten’s initial inclination was to write a piece for the
lute, however Bream, knowing a large-scale lute piece by Benjamin Britten would be performed
infrequently, tried desperately— and ultimately successfully—to convince Britten to write for
the guitar instead.110
As was typical of Bream’s demands when asking prominent composers to write pieces
for him, he almost certainly requested a large-form piece from Britten, as he was not particularly
fond of “meringues and lollipops.”111 In the early 60s, Bream spoke with Britten during walks
between rehearsal sessions with Peter Pears. During these walks, Britten detailed the struggles of
being a modern composer and using “one of the older forms, like sonata form.”112 Britten
believed that the late sonatas of Debussy represented the final word on the form,113 and it this
was likely his way of politely refusing to write a sonata for the guitar.
Britten was finally convinced after hearing Bream perform Manuel DeFalla’s Homenaje
pour le Tombeau de Claude Debussy, presumably at the Aldeburgh festival. Bream later
remembered, “He rushed around and said ‘Julian, that Falla piece; that’s the most magnificent
piece … (it probably only lasts four or five minutes), but there’s twenty minutes of music in that
piece…”114 Britten finished the piece entitled Nocturnal, Op. 70 after John Dowland on
November 17, 1963.115

108
Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten, Schubert: Winterreise (New York, N.Y.: Decca, 1991).
109
110
111
Ibid., chap. 16.
112
Ibid., chap. 29.
113
Ibid.
114
Ibid.
115
Benjamin Britten, Nocturnal, after John Dowland, for Guitar, Op. 70, ed. Julian Bream (London: Faber and
Faber; sole agents for USA: G. Schirmer, New York, 1965).
36
Nocturnal, Op. 70 after John Dowland
So really, the unanswered question [in Nocturnal] is: what's death like? That's the real question.
What is it like to die? Is it nothingness? Is it a bad dream? Is it a sweet dream? How do we go
gently or un-gently into that good night?
-Eliot Fisk116
In an interview conducted for this treatise, guitarist David Tanenbaum said of the Britten
Noctutnal “It’s easily the greatest piece ever written directly for the guitar.”117 In a 1986 article
for Classical Guitar magazine, the scholar Michael Donley takes Tanenbaum’s assertion a step
further claiming, “there can be little doubt that […] Britten is the greatest twentieth-century
composer to have written [...] for the guitar.”118 In the years since its composition the piece and
the performer for whom it was written have become inextricably linked. In fact, besides Bream,
few other guitarists have truly championed the piece, and it doesn’t figure prominently, if at all
in the repertoires of John Williams, David Russell, Manuel Barrueco or Pepe Romero.
“The Nocturnal has been talked about a million-billion times,” Eliot Fisk stated in an
interview for this treatise,119 and, indeed, the amount of critical writing on the piece is quite
daunting. For the reader interested in a brief yet theoretically sound analysis of Nocturnal, there
are two articles of note: Timothy Buell’s Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal published in the Summer
1986 issue of Guitar Review120 and Michael Donley’s Britten’s Nocturnal from the 5th volume of
Classical Guitar.121 For those interested in an in-depth analysis, the treatise A theoretical and
historical analysis of Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal, Op. 70, for guitar, appertaining to its
significance as one of his major pieces inspired by night, sleep, dreams, and death by guitarist
Steven Walter is an excellent choice.122

116
Fisk, Eliot, interview.
117
118
Michael Donley, “Britten’s Nocturnal,” Classical Guitar 5, no. 9 (May 1987): 18.
119
120
Timothy Buell, “Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal,” Guitar Review 66 (Summer 1986): 6–12.
121
Donley, “Britten’s Nocturnal.”
122
Steven Walter, “A Theoretical and Historical Analysis of Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal, Op. 70, for Guitar,
Appertaining to Its Significance as One of His Major Pieces Inspired by Night, Sleep, Dreams, and Death” (Florida
State University, 1997).
37
The best resource for the reader in need of an analysis that is both brief and clever and
presents a unique view of the work is Stephen Goss’ article Come Heavy Sleep: motive &
metaphor in Britten’s Nocturnal, opus 70. Originally published in the European Guitar Teachers
Association of the UK’s Guitar Forum 1 in September 2001, the article is now available for free
download at Goss’ website; www.stephen-goss.co.uk.123
In an interview conducted for this treatise, Eliot Fisk offered a summation of his personal
analysis of the piece. Many of Fisk’s insights have been discussed in other places, however his
analysis is invaluable to guitarists because it is succinct and can be easily and directly applied to
one’s performance of the piece. For Fisk, understanding the form is crucial to preparing a
compelling performance.
“I think the main question in Nocturnal is to get the form, the big form,” Fisk said. For
Eliot Fisk, this form consists of two statements of the theme, at the beginning and the end of the
piece, which bookend three large sets of three variations (for clarity, see the diagram below).
Fisk believes, as do other scholars including Michael Donley, that Britten’s intent is to begin the
piece in his musical ‘language’ and to gradually transform the piece into the ‘language’ of John
Dowland. The opening movement Musingly is not a variation, but a statement of the theme in
Britten’s ‘language.’ The final movement is Dowland’s original theme.
“The exact mid-point of the piece becomes Variation VI in my analysis; the dreaming
variation,” Fisk states. This is where he believes Britten begins to alter the largely bi-tonal
‘language’ of the first four variations to a ‘language’ closer to that of John Dowland. In his
analysis of Nocturnal, Michael Donley also notes the change of mood here saying, “pure
tonalities begin to emerge in the harmonic passages, which are based in G major.”124
Fisk also believes the Passacaglia is actually a set of three variations. The first variation
begins at the first measure of the Passacglia and goes through measure 16 and the second begins
at measure 17 and continues through measure 26. The final variation within the Passacaglia
begins with the pizzicati at measure 27 and continues until Dowland’s theme appears in Slow and
quiet.

123
Stephen Goss, “Come Heavy Sleep: Motive and Metaphor in Britten’s Nocturnal for Guitar Op. 70,” European
Guitar Teacher’s Association Guitar Forum 1 (September 2001).
124
Donley, “Britten’s Nocturnal,” 21.
38
I. Musingly –
II. Very agitated – III. Restless – IV. Uneasy –
V. March-like– VI. Dreaming – VII. Gently Rocking –
VIII. Passacaglia (3 variations: meas. 1-16; meas. 17-26; meas. 27-end) –
Slow and quiet (Come, Heavy Sleep)
Figure 4: Eliot Fisk’s Interpretation of the Form of Britten’s Nocturnal
Another important aspect of Eliot Fisk’s analysis of Britten’s Nocturnal is the importance
of Britten’s use of the Dowland’s text. Fisk feels it is particularly important for the player to
locate the Dowland tune in each variation and pay special attention to how Britten sets the word
“death.”
Performer’s Notes
In a 1978 masterclass taped for broadcast on the BBC, Julian Bream coaches two aspiring
guitarists in performances of Britten’s Nocturnal. Over the course of the fifty-minute class,
Bream never once addresses a technical issue. He chooses instead to spend his time on issues of
phrasing, atmosphere and character and tone quality—especially at low volumes—and the
faithful execution of Britten’s meticulous expressive and dynamic markings.125 Although
Nocturnal presents a multitude of difficulties to guitarists of all levels, Bream’s critiques, I
believe, touch the heart of the matter.
“I think the first note of a piece of this length […] has got to have a little bit of presence
about it. It mustn’t necessarily be loud, but it’s got to have quality,”126 Bream said to a student in
the aforementioned class, and much of the difficulty in performing Nocturnal, as Bream alludes
to, lies not in playing all of the right notes and rhythms, but in finding the right tone and
atmosphere for each phrase—and sometimes each note—and in learning to play quietly without
losing tone quality and depth of sound.

125
“Julian Bream Masterclass 1978: Benjamin Britten Nocturnal After John Dowland Op.70 - YouTube,” accessed
September 1, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpNZROHfP_k.
126
Ibid.
39
Bream performed Nocturnal an extraordinary number of times throughout his career, and
for Bream, and many other guitarists, the piece is a testament to guitar’s legitimacy as a concert
instrument capable of realizing music of the highest quality. Bream often programmed the piece
on his most prestigious concert engagements and perform it during the second half, after the
interval. Although this is certainly an inspired programming choice, perhaps the most interesting
programming option is one suggested by the virtuoso guitarist Stephen Robinson. Robinson
believes the piece should be programmed at the end of a concert preceded by a request that the
audience refrain from applause leaving the final notes to die away into silence.127
Richard Rodney Bennett – Five Impromptus (1968), Sonata (1983)
“He possesses one of the most extraordinary talents that [has] arrived on the scene since the
young Britten startled the world 30 years ago.”
-Nicholas Maw128
Richard Rodney Bennett (1936-2012)
Richard Rodney Bennett was born in Broadstairs, England on the 29th of March 1939.
His father was a popular author of children’s books and his mother a composer who had studied
with Gustav Holst. Richard Rodney Bennett showed an early aptitude for music and by the age
of eighteen, the young Bennett had finished his third string quartet.129 While a student at The
Royal Academy, Bennett studied composition with Howard Ferguson and Lennox Berkeley and,
from 1957 to 1959, he was a student of Pierre Boulez in Paris. Boulez’s teaching made a lasting
impression on the young Bennett. Bennett’s Five Pieces for Piano from this period shows
Boulez’ influence, but also shows Bennett’s ability to be both expressive and personal using
serial framework, a trait he retained for his entire career.130

127
McCallie, Michael to Robinson, Stephen, “Treatise Request.,” August 6, 2015.
128
Nicholas Maw, “Richard Rodney Bennett,” The Musical Times 103, no. 1428 (February 1, 1962): 95.
129
Susan Bradshaw, “Bennett, Sir Richard Rodney,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University
130
Ibid.
40
Throughout the 60s and 70s, Bennett produced new work at a furious pace. During this
period, he composed two symphonies, the one-act chamber opera The Ledge and the scores for
twenty films in addition to a number of other works. During this time, his style was consistent:
expressive serialism married to first-rate craftsmanship. “For a composer to be so single-minded
in his dedication to a chosen style is these days almost uniquely admirable,” Susan Bradshaw
said in her Musical Times article Richard Rodney Bennett: The Last Decade.131
Beginning with Noctuary in 1981, Bennett began to broaden his harmonic horizons:
Noctuary blends Bennett’s serial style with the sound world of the music of Scott Joplin. Bennett
had always loved music of other styles including jazz and cabaret, but had kept this passion
separate from his “serious music.” Throughout the 80s, Bennett’s continued to explore music
with fewer restrictions and even began to use freely composed themes for certain
compositions.132
Bennett spent much of the later part of his career pursuing his interests in jazz and
cabaret. He had always been an excellent pianist and had given the UK premiere of Boulez’ First
Sonata.133 He passed away in 2012 in New York after years of performing there.134
Richard Rodney Bennett and Julian Bream
Of all the composers Bream worked with, the relationship between Julian Bream and
Richard Rodney Bennett is among the most interesting. Bennett composed three works for the
guitar: the Impromptus, which Bennett describes as “little exercises towards writing a
concerto;”135 the Guitar Concerto; and finally the Sonata of which Bream said, “the Sonata is a
very substantial piece. The writing for the guitar is even more developed than even in the
concerto.”136

131
Susan Bradshaw, “Richard Rodney Bennett: The Last Decade,” The Musical Times 123, no. 1675 (September 1,
1982): 610.
132
Bradshaw, “Bennett, Sir Richard Rodney.”
133
Ibid.
134
Zachary Woolfe, “Richard Rodney Bennett, British Composer, Dies at 76,” The New York Times, December 30,
2012, accessed September 8, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/arts/music/richard-rodney-bennett-british-
composer-dies-at-76.html.
135
Jim Tosone, Classical Guitarists: Conversations, 67.
136
Ibid., 75.
41
These three works, especially the Impromtus, represent the most widely played music
written in serial style in the entire guitar literature. In his book Classical Guitarists:
Conversations, Jim Tosone states “for many guitarists, Richard Rodney Bennett's Five
Impromptus for solo guitar was their introduction to twelve-tone or serial music.”137 Graham
Wade speculates:
The Impromptus became popular among guitarists in the 70s, not only for their
intrinsic charms, but also because they were frequently prescribed for
examinations. Being technically not too difficult, they could fill requirements for
students to perform contemporary music without the problems that exist in more
extended works.138
Unlike the Impromtus, Bennett’s Sonata is written on a much larger scale with grand
compositional aspirations. “I wanted to write an extended guitar piece that would take me further
than Impromptus,”139 Bennett said of the Sonata. Guitarist David Leisner states “[the] Sonata
[...] should and will be considered a towering masterpiece in the guitar literature in terms of
structure alone.”140
Ostensibly, all of Bennett’s guitar works were written for Julian Bream and Bream edited
each score carefully. However, the guitarist and composer have not always agreed on certain
issues regarding the dedications of the pieces and the compositional ideas within the pieces
themselves. For instance, on the matter of the dedication of Impromtus, Bennett says, “from the
moment [Julian and I] got to know each other, Julian bullied me to write him a Concerto for
guitar […]. Instead, I wrote Impromptus for him in 1968, about 14 years after we first met,”141
while Bream recalls, “Richard Rodney Bennett, for instance, actually wrote for me - I'm never
too sure whether I actually asked him - a lovely little collection of miniatures called
Impromptus.”142
When asked by Jim Tosone about why he was so particular regarding performers making
edits in his compositions Bennett responded “I'm a composer who decides the notes I want, and
that's that. I don't mean I'm rigid or academic. But if I put down a note on the page it's because
I've chosen that note rather than any other." In fact, there was a disagreement between Bennett

137
Ibid., 64.
138
Wade, Graham, The Art of Julian Bream, 122.
139
140
Ibid., 78.
141
Ibid., 67.
142
42
and Bream that occurred over an addition Bream made to Bennett’s Guitar Concerto. Bream later
recounted the incident to Tony Palmer in A Life on the Road:
[Bennett] gives you the feeling that he knows exactly what he's doing, and he doesn't take
too kindly to any suggested alteration. Once he's done it, that's that. But I'll tell you a
little secret. In the middle movement of the concerto, there's a modest little flourish that I
make, which isn't in the score. I haven't exactly changed the notes, but I use a pattern of
notes he's written and make an arpeggio of it. When I did it, I knew he didn't disapprove,
but I also knew he didn't quite approve.143
Years later in an interview for the documentary Julian Bream: My Life in Music, Bennett seems
to have accepted Bream’s wisdom in changing the Concerto:
Julian has a very personal attitude to what you write for him; he will change
things. In the concerto, in one of the cadenzas, he suddenly did an extraordinary
[rasgueado] and I said 'what are you doing,' and he said, 'oh, I felt like doing that
there.' So, I wasn't about to argue, it was very dramatic and exciting and the
cadenza is a place, traditionally where the player goes mad and does all sorts of
exciting things. I've heard the concerto played by other performers who were
more intellectual [...], but Julian's performance has a certain poetry and mystery
and darkness which no one else has.144
Impromptus
As stated above, Bennett’s Five Impromptus have become staples of the modern guitar
repertoire. Upon their composition, Bream said of them:
They’re five miniature tone poems that explore one or two aspects of a mood.
Because of their brevity, they have great charm and they make quite subtle
musical points. All five are in fact derived from the note-row stated without
repetition, at the beginning of No. 1 and returning near the end of No. 5, a
procedure that gives them a feeling of unity and of returning to a starting point—a
characteristic of tonal music.145
Additionally, two Doctoral theses have been written on Bennet’s Five Impromptus: Steven
Raisor’s Twentieth Century Techniques in Selected Works for Solo Guitar146 which has been

143
Ibid., 90.
144
145
146
Raisor, Steven C., Twentieth-Century Techniques in Selected Works for Solo Guitar: Serialism (New York: The
Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd., 1999).
43
published by The Edwin Mellen Press, and Zachary Johnson’s The Solo Guitar Works of Richard
Rodney Bennett.147 Both sources are excellent and should be reviewed by any guitarist interested
in the compositional techniques used in the Impromptus.
In addition to Bream’s accurate description above, Raisor states “strict 12-tone technique
is displayed in the Impromptus,” and he goes on to state that Bennett does not use secondary
series or other techniques that fall outside the realm of ‘strict’ serialism such as rotation or free
use of the series.148 Raisor provides a detailed analysis of the form, phrase-structure and pitch
material of each movement. In his analysis of Impromptus, Zacharay Johnson provides a
similarly structured analysis with a few diversions of opinion from Raisor on theoretical issues.
Sonata
“The Sonata is like an extended version of the Impromtus, only more sophisticated.”
-David Leisner149
In his treatise, Zachary Johnson says of Bennett’s Sonata, “Bennett’s Sonata for Guitar
demonstrates an evolutionary leap in his compositional style and language.”150 He proceeds by
quoting Susan Bradshaw on the subject:
[Bennett] began to embrace ‘a much broader harmonic field – one with a
continued emphasis on serial structures, certainly, but no longer necessarily tied
to the chromatic rotations of a twelve-note row. In other words, while serial
procedures remain paramount, it is impossible to predict the nature of the material
to which they are now being applied and the material is a great deal more flexible
in itself.151
Johnson’s treatise is the only existing theoretical scholarship on the Bennett Sonata, and
is absolutely invaluable to any guitarist wishing to perform the piece, especially considering the
scope of the piece and the complexity of the material. Other valuable resources on this piece

147
Zachary Johnson et al., “The Solo Guitar Works of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett,” 2011.
148
Raisor, Steven C., Twentieth-Century Techniques in Selected Works for Solo Guitar: Serialism, 5.
149
150
Johnson et al., “The Solo Guitar Works of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett,” 60.
151
Ibid.
44
include Susan Bradshaw’s article for The Musical Times entitled Richard Rodney Bennett: The
Last Decade and Jim Tosone’s interview with Bennett in Classical Guitarists: Conversations.
Performer’s Note
Much has been said about the eminent playability of the Bennett Impromptus. However,
the pieces are constructed so idiomatically for the instrument, a feat that is doubly impressive
considering they were Bennett’s first guitar piece, that a few items must be mentioned. Although
Bream is listed as editor, it must be noted that Bennett purchased an instrument for the
composition of the piece and claims, “although the score says ‘Fingerings by Julian Bream,’ a lot
of the original fingering was mine. It gave me a strong feeling of what it was like to play the
piece.”152
In addition to the playability of the Impromptus, the pieces are strongly lyrical and
accessible to general audiences. Steven Raisor believes this is because “the series used as a basis
for the Impromptus is constructed in a way that […] combines the 12-tone system with non-
functional triadic harmony of the tonal system,” thus allowing Bennett to include harmonies that
echo traditional tonality.
None of the piece’s difficulties would deter a professional guitarist from performing
them, however there are a few difficulties worth noting. The first occurs in the second movement
Agitato and consists of repeated notes on two strings played very rapidly with the thumb and
index fingers, shown in Example 11.
Example 11: Bennett, Impromptus, “Agitato,” mm. 30-31
Richard Rodney Bennett IMPROMPTUS

Copyright renewed
All Rights Reserved

152
45

Another difficult passage takes place in the opening measure of the fourth Impromptu titled Con
fuoco, shown in Example 12. The performer is asked to perform extended melodic lines on the
bass strings with pizzicato technique.
Example 12: Bennett, Impromptus, “Con fuoco,” mm. 1-4
Richard Rodney Bennett IMPROMPTUS

Copyright renewed
All Rights Reserved

Unlike the Impromptus, the Bennett Sonata is a tremendously difficult work that
represents several months of intense study and practice to any performer interested in the
challenge. If the Impromtus show Bennett learning how to adapt his compositional style to the
guitar, Sonata is his style fully realized. The piece is composed in four movements and lasts 23
minutes in performance. Bennett includes nearly every type of difficulty available including:
rasgueados; harmonics; a plethora of challenging rhythms and time signatures; a wide range of
color and dynamics; Bream’s favorite, arpeggiated chords by “dragging” fingers; slurs; and
many passages that require a great deal of velocity. In an interview conducted for this treatise,
guitarist and Bennett scholar Zachary Johnson offered some advice to guitarists interested in
performing the Sonata:
The Sonata is a much more challenging work [than the Impromptus], for
performer and audience, but can be very rewarding. Using similar techniques, yet
pushing them further, and breaks away from the initial matrices further satisfy
Bennett’s music priorities, which is always lyricism. It does what the Impromptus
46
did in the exploration of textures and timbre of the guitar, and broadens out
formally.153
Tom Eastwood – Ballade-Phantasy (1968)
Tom Eastwood (1922-1999)
Tom Eastwood studied at Cambridge University154 and was appointed to the British
Council. While serving on the British Council, Eastwood was stationed in Ankara, Turkey where
he began studying composition with Necil Kâzimakses. Eastwood continued his studies with
Boris Blacher in Berlin and Edward Stein London. His first major success as a composer came
when his String Trio was awarded a top prize at the 1949 Cheltenham Open Competitive
Festival. Major works from Eastwood’s career include Christopher Sly and the chamber opera
The Taming of the Shrew.155
Eastwood and the Guitar
Although Tom Eastwood composed the three solo guitar works Amphora, Romance et
plainte and Ballade-Phantasy and the chamber work for guitar and flute or oboe Uirapurú, none
of his works for the instrument have found a place in the instrument’s core repertoire. In The Art
of Julian Bream, Graham Wade’s only note concerning Ballade-Phantasy is that the piece is
“reflective and challenging [and was] premiered by Bream at Queen Elizabeth Hall on the 30th of
March 1969 [and has been] neglected by recitalists.”156

153
Johnson, Zachary, interview by McCallie, Michael, E-mail, September 17, 2015.
154
Michael Kennedy, ed., “Eastwood, Thomas,” The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 2nd Ed. Rev.. Oxford Music
Online (Oxford University Press, n.d.), accessed August 27, 2015,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t237/e3270.
155
Cooke, Richard, “Eastwood, Thomas Hugh,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University
156
47
Ballade-Phantasy
Eastwood’s Ballade-Phantasy is constructed in two movements. The first, Ballade,

begins with a slow, plaintive melody, shown in Example 13, marked reflective and mysterious
that is in A Phrygian mode. The appoggiaturas on the second B flat in the first measure and the
second C in the following measure become a recurring motive throughout the piece from which
most of the dramatic tension is derived.
Example 13: Eastwood, Ballade-Phantasy, “Ballade,” mm. 1-4
BALLADE-PHANTASY
Music by Tom Eastwood
© 1969 by Faber Music Ltd
Reproduced by kind permission of the publishers
All rights reserved
Harmonically, the Ballade exhibits a great deal of freedom, but the key centers of A and
E, both powerful open strings on the guitar, are emphasized. Formally, the piece consists of a
series of varying compositional ideas held together by the recurrence of the appoggiatura motive
stated at the beginning.
Example 14: Eastwood, Ballade-Phantasy, “Ballade,” mm. 57
BALLADE-PHANTASY
48
All rights reserved
An example of this recurrence of the appoggiatura motive occurs in measure 57, shown in
Example 14, where it appears in the high voice of a series of four-voice chords. This occurs
immediately after an improvisatory arpeggio passage and serves to ground the work after a
harmonic and melodic excursion. The movement ends with an open fifth E chord followed
melodically by both a B flat and B natural that provide an air of tonal ambiguity.
Like the Ballade, the second movement Phantasy uses a recurring melodic motive to
unify the different sections of the piece. Instead of an appoggiatura, here Eastwood uses the
tritone. It appears unadorned in the opening measures in the bass, shown in Example 15. This
interval appears throughout each section of the movement.
Example 15: Eastwood, Ballade-Phantasy, “Phantasy,” mm. 1-2
BALLADE-PHANTASY
All rights reserved
Formally, the Phantasy is constructed in three sections: an intense introduction that

presents the tritone motive; an improvisatory middle section marked meno mosso that features
repeated note figurations; and a third section marked con moto that employs an ostinato bass
melody in A minor. The piece ends with a brief coda where the material from the introduction
featuring the tritone returns.
49
Performer’s Note
Eastwood’s Ballade-Phantasy, like Swayne’s Solo and Apivor’s Variations, has fallen to
the wayside of the modern canon of classical guitar pieces. Although Bream premiered the piece,
he never recorded it and it was never given a place in his performing repertoire. Fortunately, the
piece has recently received a truly stellar recording by the Uruguayan guitarist Marco Sartor on
his recording entitled Red.
The piece has been well written and edited for the guitar, none of the material is
unplayable and the compositional ideas are inspired and compelling. It is written in a three-voice
texture that sounds pleasing on the instrument; not too sparse, not too thick. In my opinion, the
greatest deterrent to performing the piece is the repeated note section of the Phantasy. The
section lasts for 25 measures and must be played with alternating strokes from the index and
middle fingers due to the irregular placement of bass notes; it cannot be played with a “three
finger” or tremolo pattern without losing the ability to accent the bass notes. This requires a
Herculean level of endurance and would be difficult to perform with consistency.
Overall, the Ballade-Phantasy is a challenging but well-written piece that is accessible to
audiences and was composed in a way that flatters the instrument. However, it might prove
daunting to the guitarist without the endurance and speed necessary to perform repeated notes. In
an interview conducted for this treatise guitarist Marco Sartor stated Ballade-Phantasy is
underrepresented in current concert programs and urged guitarists to play the piece more often
saying:
Do it! It deserves to be played more. Of course carefully follow the dynamics, the
rhythms, and all other indications. Think of its most effective place within the
program, perhaps in the middle of more traditional and upbeat works, for it starts
and finishes with an introverted character.157
Peter Racine Fricker – Paseo, Op. 61 (1970)
"The new spirit of the immediate postwar years was epitomized by Fricker’s music, which owed
nothing to folksong."

157
Sartor, Marco, interview by McCallie, Michael, E-mail, August 30, 2015.
50
-Ian Kemp and Michael Meckna158
Peter Racine Fricker (1920-1990)
Peter Racine Fricker was one of the most influential British composers of the post-war
period. He was among the first English composers to eschew the pastoral style, exemplified by
Holst and Vaughn-Williams, and to incorporate the expanded tonal palette of Berg, Schoenberg,
Hindemith and Bartok into his compositions. Fricker was trained at both The Royal
Conservatory and Morley College, and was particularly influenced by his composition professor
at Morley, Matyas Seiber, who he continued to study with until 1960. Fricker held many
prominent teaching posts throughout his career including Music Director of Morley College,
succeeding Michael Tippett, as Professor of Composition at UC Santa Barbara. He was awarded
the Koussevitsky Prize in 1949.
In their article on Peter Racine Fricker’s music for Grove Music Online, Ian Kemp and
Michael Meckna describe Fricker’s music as being "predominantly instrumental and densely
chromatic, [and displaying] an assured grasp of large-scale formal processes and a rigorous
intellectual drive." They further claim that although Fricker would sometimes “suggest” 12-tone
technique, “he never entirely abandoned the structural resources of tonality.” An early hallmark
of Fricker’s style was his mastery of traditional forms, especially multi-movement symphonic
form and the rondo. He eventually abandoned traditional, multi-movement forms for works
composed in a single movement with many contrasting sections.
Paseo, Op. 61
“Fricker is an austere, serious composer...”

-Julian Bream159

158
Ian Kemp and Michael Meckna, “Fricker, Peter Racine,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford
University Press, n.d.), accessed August 20, 2015,
159
51
Besides the piece O Mistress Mine for voice and guitar written in 1961 for Julian Bream
and Peter Pears,160 Paseo, Op. 61 is Peter Racine Fricker’s only composition for the classical
guitar. The piece was written expressly for Julian Bream and was premiered by the dedicatee in
June of 1970.161 In his book The Art of Julian Bream, Graham Wade says of Paseo:
The title Paseo means either a walk in general, or, more specifically, that activity
in the evening in Spanish communities when it seems that most of the people,
young and old alike, are parading the streets, talking with family and friends,
seeing and being seen.162
Paseo begins with a two-measure theme, shown in Example 16, meant to imitate the
“walking” described in the title through the use of repeated notes and a “limping” grace note.
Also, many of the elements present in the motive will be used in later sections of the piece
including the highly chromatic melodic line and the harmony built in fourths.
Example 16: Fricker, Paseo, Op. 61, mm. 1-2
PASEO
Music by Peter Racine Fricker
All rights reserved
Formally, Paseo is constructed as a single, large movement with a series of sections that
diverge from the main theme, shown above, which eventually return. While not technically a
Rondo, Paseo exhibits a similar structure: dramatic tension is created throughout the piece due to

160
Fricker, Peter Racine, “Peter Racine Fricker: Chronological Catalog of Works | UCSB Library,” UC Santa
Barbara Library, accessed August 31, 2015, http://www.library.ucsb.edu/special-collections/performing-
arts/pamss17c.
161
162
Ibid.
52
an expectation that the main theme will return, and like most well-versed composers of Rondo
form, Fricker will often hint at the theme’s return but refrain from stating it immediately. An
example of this occurs at measure 145, where the chromatic flourish, shown in Example 17,
would seem to indicate a return of the theme, but is instead followed by different material. Paseo
ends characteristically by returning to the main theme in the final bars.
PASEO
All rights reserved
In addition to the form, tension in Paseo is often created through smaller, local devices.
The piece is broadly centered around the pitches of the guitar’s two lowest strings, E and A, but a
great deal of chromaticism is present throughout. In fact, Fricker uses the unadorned chromatic
scale frequently throughout the piece and of course the theme itself is highly chromatic.
Harmonic tension is created by the juxtaposition of quartal and triadic harmonies. Many of the
chords in the piece are built in fourths, and Fricker will frequently “resolve” extended sections of
quartal chords to a section featuring harmonies based on triads. An excellent example occurs in
measures 199 through 202, shown in Example 18: the quartal harmony, built on F, resolves to a
B flat minor chord in first inversion all with a pedal A underneath.
53
PASEO
All rights reserved
Performer’s Note
Peter Racine Fricker’s Paseo is one of the few pieces in the Bream repertoire to include
clear references to the Spanish heritage of the classical guitar. First, there is the title, in Spanish,
which alludes to a Spanish cultural tradition. Second, there are several allusions to the traditional
sound of the Spanish guitar in the piece, the best example being a long arpeggio section, using
fingers “pim,” marked L’istesso tempo, which Graham Wade claims “offers hints of Spanish
echoes almost as a kind of parody.”163 Although the highly chromatic style of the piece will
certainly challenge an audience, a brief explanation of the program and Spanish references will
help to provide tangible items for which to listen.
The difficulties in performing Paseo lie primarily in cultivating an imaginative
interpretation to unify its various sections. In a 1973 review for Music & Letters, the reviewer
makes a similar claim saying “[Paseo, Op. 61 contains a] frequent waywardness of tempo and
changes of metre require considerable powers of musicianship from its interpreter...”164 The
technical difficulties presented are often the techniques that frequent many of the ‘Bream’ pieces
including: artificial harmonics, chords that span all six strings and are arpeggiated with the
thumb and index finger and pizzicato playing. As mentioned before, the piece includes an
extended “pim” arpeggio section.

163
Ibid.
164
J. V. C., “Review: Guitar Solo,” Music & Letters 54, no. 2 (April 1, 1973): 247.
54
Malcolm Arnold – Fantasy for Guitar, Op. 107 (1971)
Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006)
Malcolm Arnold began playing the trumpet at age 15 because of his admiration for the
trumpet playing of Louis Armstrong.165 He showed such skill at the instrument that he was
admitted to The Royal College of Music the following year on scholarship. While there he
studied both trumpet and composition, briefly, with Patrick Hadley and Gordon Jacob.166 His
time at the RCM was short however: he left in 1942 to take the position of second trumpet with
the London Philharmonic and would eventually be appointed Principal.167
In 1948, Malcolm Arnold was awarded a Mendelssohn Scholarship that allowed him to
compose full-time.168 However, his style was considered old-fashioned. His influences were
Berlioz, Mahler, Sibelius, Bartók and jazz music, while many of his young contemporaries had
adopted the atonal style of Arnold Schoenberg.169 Throughout his career he was often criticized
for this lack of progressiveness, especially in the 1960s, when, as is stated in his obituary in The
Telegraph, “Arnold experienced the chill wind of critical disapproval because his music was not
regarded as ‘serious" enough.”170
Stylistically, Arnold’s music is tuneful and accessible and he was fond of incorporating
popular idioms into his serious compositions. Examples of this include the Sixth Symphony,
which includes an homage to Charlie Parker played on the saxophone and according to Burton
Page-Piers “the superb Guitar Concerto, written for his longstanding friend Julian Bream,
includes a blues that pays homage to Django Reinhardt.”171
Although his music was not always the darling of critics, Malcolm Arnold achieved
considerable success throughout his long career. He was made CBE in 1970 and was knighted in

165
“Sir Malcolm Arnold - Telegraph,” The Telegraph, last modified September 25, 2006, accessed September 9,
2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1529701/Sir-Malcolm-Arnold.html.
166
Piers Burton-Page, “Arnold, Sir Malcolm,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press,
167
“Sir Malcolm Arnold - Telegraph.”
168
Burton-Page, “Arnold, Sir Malcolm.”
169
“Sir Malcolm Arnold - Telegraph.”
170
“Obituary: Sir Malcolm Arnold” The Telegraph.
171
55
1993.172 He composed many successful film scores, including the score to the David Lean film A
Bridge on the River Kwai, and nine symphonies.173
Malcolm Arnold and Julian Bream
“In my younger days, Malcolm Arnold was very important to me,” Julian Bream told
Tony Palmer in A Life on the Road, “it was refreshing to be with a man who still wrote music
in the old traditional style, albeit with originality and exemplary skill. He was very brave
[…].”174 One can only imagine Bream’s admiration for Arnold’s music was based on his
sympathy to Arnold’s tonal and melodic compositional style.
Arnold composed three works that feature the guitar: Fantasy for Guitar, Op. 107 (1971),
Concerto for Guitar and Chamber Orchestra, Op. 67 (1969) and Serenade for Guitar and
Strings (1955). All three pieces were composed for Bream and according to guitarist Craig
Ogden, Bream and Arnold spent a great deal of time working on the early Serenade together.
“Bream and Arnold were close personal friends,” Ogden says, “with a shared love of jazz and
late nights, and together they explored the sounds and techniques possible on the guitar.”175
Arnold’s largest guitar work, the Guitar Concerto, referenced above for its inspiration
stemming from the guitar playing of Django Reinhardt, was one of Bream’s most shrewdly
managed commissions. “'I'm ashamed to admit that, when I commissioned it,” Bream later
recounted to Tony Palmer, “I only offered him the sum of £50, and I think he decided to write it
because he realized that my offering even such a piddling sum showed I was really serious: in
those days I wasn't at all well off, and 50 quid was a princely sum for me to shell out.”176
Fantasy for guitar, Op. 107
Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy, Op. 107 was premiered by Julian Bream at Queen Elizabeth
Hall on the 16th of May 1971. It is one several fantasies Arnold composed for solo instruments

172
Burton, PIers-Page, “Sir Malcolm Arnold,” The Independent, last modified September 25, 2006, accessed
September 9, 2015, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sir-malcolm-arnold-417455.html.
173
174
175
Liner notes from Craig Ogden, Patrick Russ, and Richard Hickox, English guitar concertos (Colchester:
Chandos, 2001).
176
56
including clarinet, horn, flute, tuba and others. Arnold scholar Piers Burton-Page said of the
piece:
The Fantasy for guitar, Op. 107 […] [consists of] seven linked sections [that] are
[…] superbly crafted for the skill of Julian Bream. The first is a Prelude
dominated by a three-note ostinato of the interval of a fourth, falling then rising,
over which appear a succession of sweeping, majestic chords; the second is a
scherzo in six-eight time with chords in groups of three below rapid repeated
notes; then comes an Arietta with a typical Arnold three-four melody, marked pp
and cantabile; while the fourth section is a brief but energetic Fughetta,
interrupted by the fifth, another Arietta whose languor is broken in the middle by
five sinister chords ‘tambura,’ […]. The penultimate movement is a March where
the guitar cleverly creates a snare-drum effect that highlights the syncopations in
the tune above, before the Postlude takes us back to the music of the opening.177
Like its three-note ostinato noted above, the Prelude oscillates between the tonal
centersof E and A ultimately ending in E by way of two harmonics on the tonic. The overall style
is impressionistic, made apparent by the planed third-inversion major seventh and half-
diminished seventh chords that appear in the opening bars and throughout the movement shown
in Example 19. In addition, this movement has many improvisatory qualities best illustrated in
the middle section, which prominently features rising and falling scalar arabesques.
Example 19: Arnold, Fantasy for Guitar, Op. 107, “Maestoso,” mm. 1-2
FANTASY FOR GUITAR

Music by Malcolm Arnold
All rights reserved
The Scherzo, which also uses E as the tonal center, begins with a tremolo on E with
strummed chords below. These sections of tremolo are interspersed with various interludes. The

177
Wade, Graham, The Art of Julian Bream, 120–121.
57
first, shown in Example 20 with its pizzicato chords, is surely an homage to rhythm guitar style
of Django Reinhardt. Like the Prelude, the Scherzo ends with a harmonic on the tonic.
Example 20: Arnold, Fantasy for Guitar, Op. 107, “Scherzo,” mm. 8-9
FANTASY FOR GUITAR

All rights reserved
The first Arietta provides some of the most beautiful music in the entire piece. In the
opening bars, a singing melody in D major on the first string is accompanied by harmonies based
on the remaining open strings of the guitar. It is the most overtly sentimental music in the piece
and is highly reminiscent of Ravel’s famous Pavane pour une infante défunte.
The Fughetta’s subject, shown in Example 21, is in E, but the sense of a tonal center is
weakened by the G natural in the second measure and the absence of the tonic until the final note
of the subject. At measure 24, the third-inversion seventh chords and improvisatory arabesques
from the Prelude make a brief return. They soon give way to statement of the fugue subject in A
which is followed by an abrupt and unexpected ending on an open fifth chord on B.
Example 21: Arnold, Fantasy for Guitar, Op. 107, “Fughetta,” mm. 1-7
FANTASY FOR GUITAR

58
All rights reserved
The second Arietta with its singing melody and sparse texture is reminiscent of the first
Arietta, however this pleasant atmosphere is interrupted, as alluded to above, by six ominous E
minor chords played tambura. However, the opening melody soon returns and the movement
ends with the familiar E harmonic.
The March features the aforementioned snare-drum effect to create the illusion of a
percussionist. The March section begins with an impishly humorous melody in B-flat over the
“snare drum.” This section eventually gives way to a more harmonically adventurous Allegro
that ends the piece on a curious pizzicato low F sharp.
The Postlude brings the piece around full circle by recalling the ostinato pattern and
planed chords of the Prelude. After a thrilling series of arpeggios, the piece ends on an A major
chord. The ambiguity present throughout the piece is not laid to rest however: the A major chord
is in second inversion and includes a prominent low E in the bass,
Performer’s Note
Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy, Op. 107 is one of the most tuneful and accessible pieces in
the entirety of the Bream repertoire. Unlike the Bennett Sonata or Takemitsu’s All in Twilight, it
is tonal and features many compositional devices that sound flattering on the guitar: the
prominent use of open strings, three or four-voice textures and open string harmonics. The piece
also employs the entire gamut of tactically pleasing extended techniques including rasgueados,
tambura, artificial harmonics and the ever-popular technique of crossing the 4th and 5th strings to
imitate the sound of a snare drum seen in Example 22. The two Ariettas are especially beautiful
on the guitar with their singing melodies, sparse texture and harmonies that make use of the open
stings.
Example 22: Arnold, Fantasy for Guitar, Op. 107, “March,” mm. 3-4
59
FANTASY FOR GUITAR
All rights reserved
Of all the Bream pieces, the Arnold Fantasy features more techniques that suit Bream’s
playing than any other. As Craig Ogden stated earlier, the two shared a mutual love of jazz and
spent a considerable amount of time figuring out how to fit Arnold’s style on the guitar in an
idiomatic way, so it only makes since that Bream suggested techniques that he excelled at. The
piece includes nearly every favored technique including: chords with high harmonics, tambura
and chords that require the player to drag the index finger and thumb across the strings as well as
a variety of specified tonal colors.
William Walton – Five Bagatelles (1971)
William Walton (1902-1983)
William Walton is one of the most esteemed British composers of the twentieth-century.
Throughout his long career, he was often criticized for a stubborn conservativeness of style;
always absorbing certain stylistic innovations of his more progressive colleagues into his own
traditional framework rather than breaking new ground himself. However, many critics and
scholars find that Walton’s steadfast belief in his own personal style was among his greatest
assets. “The most noticeable thing about [William Walton] is his individuality,” Kenneth Avery
said in a 1947 article on the composer.” He is not a revolutionary composer; he merely writes in
the way best suiting his feelings. Thus, although he does not defy tradition, he discards it […]
where he deems it necessary.”178
Unlike some of the composers who wrote for Julian Bream, William Walton was not
spectacularly gifted at a young age. Although he was accepted into the course at Christ Church in
Oxford where he spent much of his time studying scores and attending composition lessons with

178
Kenneth Avery, “William Walton,” Music & Letters 28, no. 1 (January 1, 1947): 10.
60
the organist Hugh Allen, he was ultimately unable to pass the BA exam in order to be awarded a
degree.179
Walton’s true education in music began after he left Christ Church. While still in Oxford,
Walton found steadfast friendship in the company of the Stillwell family: Osbert, Edith and
Sacheverell.180 Through his relationship with the Stillwells, Walton was able to meet Stravinsky,
Gershwin and Ravel.181 During this period, Walton’s composition talents bloomed culminating
in the early successes Façade (1922-9), a collaboration between Walton and Edith Stillwell,182
and the first string quartet, a piece which received praise from the composer Alban Berg.183
As Walton’s music moved towards maturity, he began to focus on a series of dramatic
works. Highlights from this period include the cantata Belshazzar’s Feast (1930-31), the concerti
for viola and violin and the opera Troilus and Cressida (1954).184 It was during this period that
Walton reached the height of his fame as a composer. A particular milestone was his
collaboration with the violinist Jascha Heifetz on the Violin Concerto (1939).185
In the later part of his career, Walton’s compositional output waned. He was famously
self-critical, and produced fewer works after he moved to the Italian island of Ischia. In summing
up Walton’s style and career for The Musical Times, Christopher Palmer said:
Walton was very much a loner, a 'one-off; in this he has many points of contact
with Elgar and Delius. He had little formal instruction, held
no official appointments, took little part in public musical life, taught no pupils,
founded no school, neither spoke nor wrote much about his own or others' music,
theorized not at all, was a some-what diffident (though highly effectual
conductor) of his works and lived much out of England. In short, a private man
who liked being feted but resisted most attempts to draw him out, particularly on
the subject of his creative impulse ('I spend most of my life rubbing out what I've
written'). Yet on the purely musical level his public voice was [one] of
commanding magniloquence.186

179
Byron Adams, “Walton, William,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press, n.d.),
180
Ibid.
181
Ibid.
182
Avery, “William Walton,” 2.
183
Adams, “Walton, William.”
184
Ibid.
185
Ibid.
186
Christopher Palmer, “Sir William Walton,” The Musical Times 124, no. 1683 (May 1, 1983): 316.
61
William Walton and Julian Bream
Walton composed three pieces that feature the guitar, the first Anon in Love for voice and
guitar was written for Bream to perform with the tenor Peter Pears, and was first recorded on the
album Music for Voice and Guitar.187 The remaining two pieces, Five Bagatelles and Varii
Capricci, share the same material; the later being an orchestration of the former for guitar and
orchestra. Often overlooked due to the popularity of the Bagatelles, Anon in Love is a personal
favorite of Eliot Fisk. “The song cycle, Anon in Love,” Fisk said in an interview, “is by far the
better piece [between Anon in Love and the Five Bagatelles], and [is] really a great work.”188
The composition of Walton’s Five Bagatelles for guitar proves to be an interesting story.
According to Stephen Lloyd in his biography of Walton entitled William Walton: Muse of Fire:
Julian Bream had drawn a diagram of the guitar fingerboard and showed Walton
not only how the instrument was played--giving as well some idea of its dynamic
range and colour--but also how to write music down. Walton took this all in and
Bream found the guitar writing so good that he asked him to write something for
solo guitar. Eleven years later he produced the Five Bagatelles.189
Furthermore, the piece, which bears a dedication to Malcolm Arnold, was especially difficult for
Walton to compose. Stephen Lloyd states Malcolm Arnold’s recollection of Walton’s
insecurities in composing the Bagatelles:
Malcolm Arnold, who was staying over Christmas at Ischia, observed Walton's
painfully slow process with the Bagatelles. All he had down on paper were six
notes of the first Bagatelle that were just the open notes of the guitar. A week or
so later he had got no further. 'You know, I've been worrying about this very
much,'he remarked one day, 'I'm wondering if when he begins they'll think he's
tuning the bloody thing up.190
Ultimately, the piece was a success and figured prominently within Julian Bream’s
touring repertoire for the remainder of his career. Walton felt Bream performed the piece well,
upon hearing Julian Bream perform the second of the Five Bagatelles for him at his home in

187
188
189
Stephen Lloyd, William Walton: Muse of Fire (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2001), 236.
190
Ibid., 250.
62
Ischia, William Walton remarked, “you’ve got it better than I wrote it.”191 Until the end of
Walton’s life, Bream tried in vain to convince the great composer to write a second composition
for solo guitar. However, feeling that Bream neglected the Bagatelles in the concert hall, Walton
never obliged. Bream commented on this in A Life on the Road, “I got short shrift not too long
ago from old Willie Walton,” Bream said, “he wrote five superb Bagatelles for me back in the
early seventies, but somehow he's convinced himself that I don't play them often enough.”192
Five Bagatelles
Since their composition, Walton’s Five Bagatelles have been granted a position among
the canonic works in the guitar repertoire along with Britten’s Nocturnal and Takemitsu’s All in
Twilight. Many guitarists and scholars have written about the pieces, the best analytical work
being Michael Donley’s three-part article for Classical Guitar magazine entitled Willam
Walton’s Bagatelles.193 Donley’s article provides a detailed historical and biographical
background and a detailed theoretical analysis. Additionally Donley elaborates the connections
between the Five Bagatelles and Varii Capricci in great detail.
Performer’s Note
Walton’s Five Bagatelles have become, quite justly, notorious among guitarists for their
level of difficulty. In an interview conducted for this treatise, Eliot Fisk said:
I […] think the Walton Bagatelles are fascinating pieces, [but] I like the
Bagatelles much better in the orchestra version. That gives a much better idea of
what Walton thought he was writing, [but the solo version is] completely
unrealizable on the guitar.194
Fisk’s claim might sound slightly hyperbolic, but there are many instances in the Bagatelles
where the notes are playable, but performing them with both technical accuracy and the ability to
realize Walton’s expressive ideals can prove to be a Herculean task for guitarists of all levels.

191
192
193
Donley, Michael, “Walton’s Five Bagatelles (Part II),” Classical Guitar 8, no. 9 (June 1990): 35–39.
194
63
Perhaps the most famous example of the Bagatelles’ difficulty occurs on the first page of
the first movement, shown in Example 23. The eighth notes chords are tremendously difficult to
execute in time because the shapes are awkward and unidiomatic at the guitar.
Example 23: Walton, Five Bagatelles, “Allegro,” mm. 14-18
'Five Bagatelles'
by William Walton
© Oxford University Press 1974.
Excerpts reproduced by permission.
All rights reserved.
Additionally, the first movement includes a plethora of additional difficulties including rapid
repeated note figures, arpeggiated chords in thirty-second note quintuplets, as shown in Example
24 and many passages that lie above the 13th fret.
Example 24: Walton, Five Bagatelles, “Allegro,” mm. 60
'Five Bagatelles'
by William Walton
Curiously, the atmospheric and lyrical second movement is relatively free from technical
difficulty. The most difficult aspect of the piece is capturing the mood of the piece and
transmitting it to the audience. It is also important to execute both the harmonics throughout and
the tambura at the end clearly.
One of the most commonly excerpted pieces from the set, the third movement, marked
Alla cubana, incorporates percussive techniques and syncopations that allude to the music of
64
Latin America. The piece is based on a repeated theme that is stated at the beginning and
elaborated on throughout the movement. The two greatest difficulties in the piece involve
playing this theme accurately, with its percussion, high harmonic and repeated note scale
passage, and in executing the stretches in the coda of the piece. Both examples are shown below.
Example 25: Walton, Five Bagatelles, “Alla cubana,” mm. 8-9
'Five Bagatelles'
by William Walton
Example 26: Walton, Five Bagatelles, “Alla cubana,” mm. 44-45
'Five Bagatelles'
by William Walton
Much like the second Bagatelle, the fourth requires the performer to cultivate a richly
imagined atmosphere. Some difficulty is created by the proliferation of artificial harmonics that
must be played in conjunction with natural bass notes. However, the remaining difficulty in the
piece lies in performing the finale, Con slancio.
65
Con slancio is a fiendishly difficult study in moto perpetuo. The entire movement is
based on a two- measure motive, shown below in Example 27. This
Example 27: Walton, Five Bagatelles, “Con slancio,” mm. 1-2
'Five Bagatelles'
by William Walton
motive is expanded into a three-phrase theme which is repeated in various keys for the entirety of
the movement. In addition to the stamina and velocity that are required to perform the piece at
tempo, the awkward chord shapes that result from stating the theme in distantly related keys is
also of great difficulty to the player.
Humphrey Searle – Five (1974)
Humphrey Searle (1915-1982)
The British composer Humphrey Searle was born in Oxford on the 26th of August 1915.
He studied the classics at Oxford and music at the Royal Conservatory in London before finally
studying privately with Anton Webern at the New Vienna Conservatory. Searle was profoundly
66
influenced by his time with Webern, and from 1947 on all of his compositions apply the twelve
tone techniques then in fashion.195
A colorful feature of Searle’s compositional style was his seemingly antithetical fondness
for the music of Franz Liszt. In a 1964 article for Musical Times titled Humphrey Searle: Avant-
Garde or Romantic, Malcolm Rayment examines Searle’s juxtaposition of the Lisztian technique
of thematic transformation and serial techniques. This period in Searle’s development was short-
lived however: by the early sixties, Searle had cultivated a personal musical style.196
Searle’s later career proved to be successful, and he received numerous awards, teaching
positions, and the rank of Commander of the British Empire in 1968. He was Professor of
Composition at The Royal College of Music, The Aspen Music Festival and Stanford University,
and among his students was the noted composer Wolfgang Rihm. Humphrey Searle died in
London in 1982.197
Five
Five was composed for Julian Bream and was completed in May 1974. Bream premiered
the piece the following January at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London,198 but never recorded the
work. Humphrey Searle composed one other work which features guitar called Two Practical
Cats (1952) for guitar, cello, flute/piccolo, and narrator.
Bream performed Searle’s Five some thirty times, but he never incorporated it into his
permanent repertoire. Bream later told Maurice Summerfield,
[Walton’s Bagatelles, Tippett’s The Blue Guitar and Britten’s Nocturnal] they’re
what I would call repertoire pieces, where as Humphrey Searle’s pieces are not.
They are perhaps specialized pieces […] I would do them [at a festival] of
contemporary music […] and furthermore they would take a long time to
prepare.199

195
Colin Mason, Hugo Cole, and David C.F. Wright, “Searle, Humphrey,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music
Online (Oxford University Press, n.d.), accessed August 20, 2015,
196
Malcolm Rayment, “Searle: Avant-Garde or Romantic?,” The Musical Times 105, no. 1456 (June 1, 1964): 430–
432.
197
Mason, Cole, and Wright, “Searle, Humphrey.”
198
199
Summerfield, Maurice, Bream, Julian, and Cooper, Colin, “Julian Bream Talking... To Colin Cooper and
Maurice Summerfield.,” Classical Guitar 4, no. 6 (March 1986): 11–15.
67
True to title, the work is composed in five short movements: Prelude (Lento, quasi
improvisando), Allegro, Lento improvisando, Scherzo and Postlude. In The Art of Julian Bream,
Graham Wade says of Five:
The musical language remains dissonant throughout with no programmatic
element (such as Fricker’s use of Paseo motifs) to direct the listener. However, it
is an ambitious work and one of the few examples of Bream’s advocacy of an
atonal compostion.200
The harmonic and melodic material in Searle’ Five is of such complexity that a thorough
analysis of Searle’s use of serial technique reaches beyond the scope of this survey. However, it
is clear that the purpose of Searle’s use of serial technique is to achieve maximum variety
between the phrases and sections in each movement as well as the movements themselves.
Performer’s Note
Humphrey Searle’s Five is an extremely difficult piece for the performer, and whether the
musical substance merits the level of difficulty is questionable. This combination of difficulty for
both the performer and listener surely provides an explanation for the lack of public
performances and the absence of a commercial recording.
In a 1972 BBC interview with Kenneth Alsop, Bream is asked about his reported
assertion that modern music has been “restricted […] to a few intellectual snobs.”201 His
comment can only be pointed at pieces like Five which subscribe to such a dogmatic system of
composition. To Bream’s credit however, in his 1976 edition for Faber, he has provided us with
laudably idiomatic fingerings which pose solutions to many of the technical difficulties within
the piece. The difficulties include: an incredible amount of velocity; reaching unidiomatic chord
shapes; playing natural and artificial harmonics alone and with natural notes; executing non-
traditional rhythms; and playing with tremendous a range of color and dynamics.
Judging from its near-nonexistent presence on the concert stage alone, one might assume
that Humphrey Searle’s Five is a failure, an experiment in pushing the capabilities of the guitar
too far. However, it is a piece with serious compositional ideas realized by a master craftsman.

200
201
Bream, Classical guitar anthology Julian Bream, DVD 2.
68
Even today, the modern guitar repertoire lacks creditability in some circles and there is no reason
why a piece as accomplished as Five should not be performed. Its absence from recordings and
the concert platform should be viewed as an opportunity for enterprising young guitarists to take
up a piece and present its merits to the listening public.
Alan Rawsthorne – Elegy (1975)
“Alan Rawsthorne was a composer of the highest integrity: although late in taking up musical
studies, he quickly found his own, thoroughly individual voice, and throughout a long, prolific
career he remained faithful to the basic constituents of his style.”
-John McCabe202
Alan Rawsthorne (1905-1971)
Alan Rawsthorne began his musical study at the rather late age of nineteen after first
trying his hand at dentistry and architecture. He studied piano and cello at the Royal Manchester
College of Music and eventually studied the piano with Egon Petri. It was not until after the
completion of his formal studies that he decided to pursue composition as a full-time
occupation.203
Rawsthorne’s primary compositional influences included Hindemith, Prokofiev and
Bartok.204 His compositions can be described as atonal, but do not subscribe to any one system
of compositional thought. Colin Mason states in his article for The Musical Times, “Rawsthorne's
atonality, however, belongs to another class […] in that it is firmly related to the [...] tonal
system.”205
Rawsthorne wrote primarily in instrumental genres and, although he did experiment with
serialism in works like the Symphonic Studies (1938),206 his harmonic palette consists of a
unique blend of extended chromaticism and bitonal elements. Another hallmark of Rawsthorne’s

202
John McCabe, “Alan Rawsthorne,” The Musical Times 112, no. 1544 (October 1, 1971): 952.
203
Peter Evans, “Rawsthorne, Alan,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press, n.d.),
204
McCabe, “Alan Rawsthorne,” 952.
205
Colin Mason, “Alan Rawsthorne,” The Musical Times 91, no. 1285 (March 1, 1950): 91.
206
McCabe, “Alan Rawsthorne,” 952.
69
style, according to scholar John McCabe, is the way he manipulated the major triad. “One of the
most potent characteristics of Rawsthorne's manner, both melodically and harmonically,” John
McCabe states, “is the ambiguity produced by the way in which he used major and minor
3rds.”207
Rawsthorne was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1961 and received
honorary doctorates from the Universaties of Essex, Liverpool and Belfast. Among his major
works are the Concerto for String Orchestra, the First and Second Piano Concertos and his three
Symphonies.208 Rawsthorne died, rather unexpectedly, in 1971 at the age of 66.209
Julian Bream and Alan Rawsthorne
Julian Bream first met Alan Rawsthorne in his early teens. Bream had been asked to
perform incidental music for the Stewart Granger film Saraband for a Dead Lover of which
Rawsthorne was the music director. No original composition for the guitar came from this
meeting, but Rawsthorne was struck by Bream’s command of the instrument at such a young
age.210Though the two stayed in touch during the interim, it would be nearly 25 years before
Rawsthorne would begin to write the Elegy for Julian Bream.
The composition of the Rawsthorne Elegy features more direct input from Julian Bream
than any other piece in the Bream repertoire. Alan Rawsthorne died in 1971 before finishing the
piece, leaving Bream to complete the piece based on sketches left by the composer. In the
preface to the performing edition Bream states:
Alan Rawsthorne was in the middle of composing Elegy when he died. He had
completed the opening and fast sections to the end of bar 131, but there were only
a few sketches left to give any instruction of how the piece was to proceed.
It seemed sad to me that such distinguished music should languish when there
was at least some clue to its completion. So I decided to finish the work by
repeating the opening section, slightly varied, and incorporating the fragmentary
sketches to form an artistic whole in keeping with the composer’s style.211

207
Ibid.
208
Evans, “Rawsthorne, Alan.”
209
Alan Rawsthorne and Julian Bream, Elegy: For Guitar (London: Oxford University Press, 1975).
210
211
Rawsthorne and Bream, Elegy.
70
According to Graham Wade, Gerard Schurman produced another completion of the Elegy that is
slightly shorter in length, but for the purposes of this treatise, Bream’s completion will be
used.212
Elegy
Formally, the Rawsthorne Elegy is constructed in A–B–A form. The slow and haunting A
sections are contrasted with a quick, schero-like B section. Stylistically, Rawsthorne relies on the
extended use of chromaticism and alludes to the use of 12-tone technique. The first hint of 12-
tone technique occurs in the opening measures of the piece, shown in Example 28. The eight
notes of the first phrase do note repeat and sound as if the pitches might be a tone-row, but the E,
B flat and G are repeated in the third measure. This is symptomatic of the entire piece: the
composer wants to imitate the twelve tone sound in places, but does not use strict serial practices.
Example 28: Rawsthorne, Elegy, mm. 1-3
'Elegy for Guitar'

by Alan Rawsthorne
As might be expected of an Elegy, Rawsthorne includes a modified version of the

chromatically descending ‘lament’ bass line in the elegiac A sections. It appears for the first time
from the pick-up note to measure 21 through measure 23 and is shown in Example 29. The
gesture winds downward chromatically and closes with the low F resolving to E octaves.

212
71
'Elegy for Guitar'

by Alan Rawsthorne
The B section marked Allegro di bravura e rubato is in 2/4 time and possesses the
character of a scherzo. The section is centered in E and the melodic material here is often derived
from the chromatic scale. The section culminates in a virtuosic statement of the E chromatic
scale spread over nearly an octave and a half and arpeggios in sextuplet. The section ends with
the chromatic scale figures arriving at the open low E string followed by a high E harmonic.
As stated above, the return of the A section exists only in sketches and was completed by
Julian Bream. As Bream indicates in his preface, this closing section is a repeat of the earlier
material “slightly varied.” Fortunately, the composer’s sketches are included in Bream’s edition
of the score allow interested parties to analyze Bream’s completion. For the purpose of this
treatise, this is particularly interesting because it provides a unique look at how Bream chooses to
realize the raw compositional materials on the guitar, free of the influence of the composer.
As might be expected, the majority of the material in this section is either: a direct repeat
of material from the A section, from which Bream repeats measures 33 through 46 in their
entirety; or one of Rawsthorne’s ideas included in the sketches. However, Bream does make a
significant number of small adjustments including adding artificial harmonics, changing the
octave of a melody and even changing the occasional note. The best example of this occurs in
measure 132: Rawsthorne writes the chord on the last Bb–Eb–F, and Bream changes the F to an
F sharp.
Bream’s most significant contribution to the composition of the piece is the ending.
Bream composed the last measure and later stated “it took [him] two agonized days to sort out
72
the last bar!”213 For the final measures, shown below in Figure 3, Bream chooses to restate the
‘lament’ bass line shown in Example 30. He then asks the player to hold the F in the bass over a
quickly arpeggiated chord capped with a harmonic. As the piece closes, the F in the bass resolves
to E for the final time.
'Elegy for Guitar'

by Alan Rawsthorne
Performer’s Note
Bream completed the Elegy and edited it for publication in 1975.214 His performance of
the piece appears on the RCA recording ‘70s.215 Bream performed the piece on his annual
concert at Wigmore Hall in 1978, programming the piece during the second half after his
transcription of two of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words and the Bennett Impromptus. He
chose to follow the piece with a trio of Albeniz transcriptions to bring the concert to a close.216
Since Bream completed the piece himself, it is no surprise that the final section includes
many artificial harmonics and ends with an arpeggiated chord with a harmonic at the apex. The
Allegro di bravura section requires a great deal of velocity and stamina, however the entire piece
is written so idiomatically that most intermediate and advanced students could perform it
successfully. The texture only exceeds two or three voices for idiomatic chord shapes and much
of the piece lies comfortably in the hands.

213
Ibid., 124.
214
Rawsthorne and Bream, Elegy.
215
Bream, Classical guitar anthology Julian Bream, vol. 22.
216
73
Giles Swayne – Solo, Op. 42 (1986, rev. 1995)
Giles Swayne (1946)
Giles Swayne has enjoyed a multi-faceted career that defies easy categorization. He
studied at both Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music with teachers including Raymond
Lepperd, Harrison Birtwistle and Nicholas Maw. He furthered his studies with Olivier Messiaen
at the Paris Conservatoire from 1976 to 1977. After his time in Paris, he spent several years
abroad in rural areas in Gambia and southern Senegal. After returning from his time abroad, he
spent several years working with and composing music to be performed by London school
children.217
Swayne’s early music bears the influence of his time as an academic, however after
experiencing a musical epiphany after hearing “African tribal music – Pygmy polyphony,”218 in
1979, he made a radical stylistic change to music of greater simplicity. This change is
represented most fully in his piece CRY (1979) for 28 solo voices.219 In an article for The
Musical Times, Meiron Bowen says of this shift, “the change was really a sudden discovery of
his true identity.”220
Swayne has held the position of composer-in-residence at Clare College, Oxford.221 He
currently resides in London where he was professor of composition at Cambridge University
from 2001 to 2014. His most recent published compositions are the Bagatelles, Book 2 for piano
which were premiered in 2011 by the composer at the Tout-petit Festival de Musique in St.
Germain de Calberte, France.222
Giles Swayne, Julian Bream and the Guitar

Giles Swayne has written eight pieces for the classical guitar: Canto for Guitar, Op. 11,
Two Little Studies, Op. 19a, Suite for guitar, Op. 21, Solo, Op. 42, Memory Dances, Op. 42a,

217
Susan Bradshaw, “Swayne, Giles,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press, n.d.),
218
Meirion Bowen, “Giles Swayne,” The Musical Times 125, no. 1697 (July 1, 1984): 378.
219
Ibid.
220
Ibid.
221
“Biography,” accessed August 20, 2015, http://www.gilesswayne.com/biog.php.
222
Ibid.
74
Songlines, Op. 50, Groundwork, Op. 80 and Mancanza, Op. 86. Although his first piece Canto
was composed in 1976 for the guitarist Timothy Walker with funds provided by The British Arts
Council,223 the three subsequent works were written after Swayne became acquainted with the
guitarist Julian Bream. Of his collaboration with Bream, the composer states on his website:
The Two little studies were written on 7th April 1975 when I was living in south
Wiltshire, a few miles from that great and wonderful guitarist Julian Bream. We
soon got to know each other as neighbors, and over the years we became good
friends. He was always very generous with technical advice on writing for the
guitar, and edited two of my guitar pieces: Suite (written in 1976), and Solo,
which he commissioned in 1985.224
Peculiarly, only the published edition of the Suite for guitar, an homage to Benjamin
Britten,225 is edited by Bream. Solo, the piece written expressly for Bream was first performed
by the guitarist Gary Ryan and the edition does not include Bream’s fingerings.226 Stylistically,
the two pieces illustrate Swayne’s move away from the harmonic complexity of the Suite
towards the new found simplicity in Solo. In a note accompanying the score to Solo, Swayne
states:
During the first half of the 80s I had trimmed my musical language drastically,
eliminating all harmonic complexity and dissonance, and restricting myself to a
modal sound world and audibly physical rhythms – often derived from my interest
in African music […]. By the time I started work on Solo I had achieved the
purpose of washing my ears out, and was ready to re-enter (cautiously) a broader
sound world.227
Solo, Op. 42
Although written for Julian Bream, it is likely the guitarist never performed Solo, Op. 42a
in public. As with many of the pieces written for Bream but left un-played and without a

223
Swayne, Giles, “Canto for Guitar,” Giles Swayne: Composer, accessed October 14, 2015,
http://www.gilesswayne.com/worklist.php?categoryid=3.
224
Swayne, Giles, “Two Little Studies, Opus 19a,” accessed August 20, 2015,
225
Swayne, Giles, “Suite for Guitar, Opus 21,” accessed August 20, 2015,
226
Swayne, Giles, “Solo, Opus 42,” Giles Swayne: Composer, accessed August 20, 2015,
227
Solo for guitar, op. 42 (London: Novello, 1996), 1.
75
premiere recording from the dedicatee, Solo lacks significant academic criticism. In this case,
however, the composer has provided commentary in both a foreward to the printed score and a
note in his on-line works list. Of the harmonic and melodic content and program of the piece he
says:
Solo remains within a modal context, and much of it is purely pentatonic; but the
mode is gradually transformed and extended so that the full of twelve notes
becomes available, and therefore more clearly focused. But not for long: these
sorties into extended harmonic language are offset by regular returns to simpler,
modal material, and are therefore in clear focus.
There is a narrative subtext to this piece - an image, rather than a programme. I

imagined an old black man–an ex-slave–sitting on his porch on an evening in the
American Deep South in about 1875, strumming on an old guitar and trying to
recapture the tunes he dimly remembers hearing and singing as a boy in West
Africa, before he was transported. The melodies gradually return as he pieces the
notes together, and the music passes through many short, contrasting sections on a
voyage of remembrance. With the melodies come memories of the family he has
lost, the language he has almost forgotten, and of African village life. He has been
torn away from everything that mattered to him, and is profoundly alone–hence
the title of the piece.228
Formally, the piece is written in a loose A-B-A with a myriad of episodes in the B
section. The episodic nature of the piece ties in with the programmatic element of a guitarist
remembering the music of his past. Besides the areas where Swayne “transforms” the mode, the
melodic material consists of pentatonic passages like the one in E shown in Example 31.
Example 31: Swayne, Solo, Op. 42, mm. 63-66
Solo
Music by Giles Swayne
© Copyright 1986 Novello & Company Limited.

228
Swayne, Giles, “Solo, Opus 42.”
76
Printed by permission of Novello & Company Limited
The pentatonic sections are primarily in E and Swayne will often juxtapose these sections,
sometimes very abruptly with episodes that contain unrelated accidentals. In one such episode
marked cantabile shown in Example 32, Swayne presents a lyrical melody in G minor before
returning to E pentatonic.
Example 32: Swayne, Solo, Op. 42, mm. 143-146
Solo
After an episode marked Slow at measure 326, the pentatonic motive from figure 1
returns and Swayne gradually brings back the material from the beginning of the piece; a
recapitulation of sorts. The piece ends with a brief two-bar coda utilizing the E minor pentatonic
scale. The penultimate note, a G-sharp, provides the last hint of the “modal transformation” that
has occurred and resolves down by half step to G.
Performer’s Note
From one standpoint, it is curious that Swayne’s Solo, Op 42 has been performed and
recorded so infrequently since its composition in 1986 and subsequent revision in 1995. The
piece has a compelling story and features many idiomatically written passages that call upon the
blues-rock heritage of the guitar in the twentieth-century. However, there is only one commercial
recording, made by Tom Kerstens for the BGS label in 2005.
77
Upon reviewing the score, there are certain problematic elements, which begin to explain
this dearth of performances. First, the texture throughout is very sparse. The basic texture of the
piece is two voices and this paucity often sounds unflattering on the instrument. In addition,
there is often more than an octave separating the melody and the bass; another unflattering
sound. An example of both of these items occurs in one of the first episodes shown in Example
33.
Example 33: Swayne, Solo, Op. 42, mm. 43
Solo
In addition to these issues, in order to approximate the rhythms of the African music that
inspired the piece, there is a meter change in nearly every bar. The meter changes in Figure 3 are
indicative of the number of changes throughout the piece. Other difficulties include harmonics
within chords and incorporating pizzicato in one voice and legato in another.
Difficulties aside, Solo is a piece that deserves more performances than it has received in
the nearly 30 years since its composition. It has a strong programmatic element and the harmonic
and melodic content are among the most audience friendly in the Bream repertoire. On his disc
Black Venus, Tom Kerstens programs the piece with other modern compositions by Brouwer,
Takemitsu, Riley and others, but the piece also complements a program featuring other pieces
with blues-rock or African elements.229

229
Tom Kerstens et al., Black Venus: New Music for Guitar, Audio CD (BGS, 2011).
78
Peter Maxwell-Davies – Hill Runes (1981)
Peter Maxwell-Davies (b. 1934)
Peter Maxwell-Davies showed an early aptitude for music from which composition and
piano performance were a natural outgrowth. He attended the Royal Manchester College of
Music and Manchester University simultaneously and was influenced by Alexander Goehr and
Harrison Birtwistle, members of the New Music Manchester Group, who introduced Davies to
serial technique. Davies also studied composition with Goffredo Petrassi in Rome and Milton
Babbitt, Roger Sessions and Earl Kim while a student at Princeton University.230
Davies’ musical style is a juxtaposition of the avant-garde, serial influence of his teachers
and several unique, local influences. Davies has been profoundly influenced by sacred music of
the English renaissance, specifically works by Byrd and Gibbons, and commonly uses plainchant
thematically. His composition Worldes Blis’ is according to Davies “based [entirely] on a famous
13th century monody.231 Another unique influence is the mythology of the Scottish town of
Orkney, where Davies first visited in 1970 and eventually relocated. Davies has been specifically
influenced by the writing of George Mackay Brown, whom Grove claims has “mediated [the
mythology of Orkney through] poetry and fiction.”232
Peter Maxwell-Davies is among the most successful British composers of the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries. He was made Commander of the British Empire in 1981 and was
knighted in 1987. He has received commissions from the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the
Boston Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and innumerable other
such organizations. His recent works include a Violin Sonata, a String Trio and the String Sextet,
which was premiered by The Nash Ensemble at Wigmore Hall in 2009.233

230
John Warnaby, “Davies, Peter Maxwell,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press,
231
Dunnett, Roderic, “Life & Career - Sir Peter Maxwell Davies - Maxopus.com,” Sir Peter Maxwell Davies:
Maxopus.com, last modified 2009, accessed August 21, 2015, http://www.maxopus.com/life_career.aspx.
232
Warnaby, “Davies, Peter Maxwell.”
233
Dunnett, Roderic, “Life & Career - Sir Peter Maxwell Davies - Maxopus.com.”
79
Peter Maxwell-Davies and the Guitar
In his article Hill Runes for the periodical Tempo, David Harvey says of Peter Maxwell-
Davies style of writing for the guitar: “[he recreates] the harmonic richness of his other works in
terms of the guitar, rather than accommodating it to the instrument’s supposed limitations.”234
Davies has written three solo works for the instrument, Lullaby for Ilian Rainbow (I972), Hill
Runes (1981) and Sonata (1984), and has incorporated the instrument into many of his operatic
and chamber works. In each of these works he has refused to write to the guitar’s limitations,
specifically avoiding the instrument’s Spanish heritage.
Julian Bream and Timothy Walker are the two guitarists for whom each of Maxwell-
Davies’ solo pieces were written. Davies originally intended both Hill Runes and the Sonata for
Bream but an unfortunate automobile accident prevented Bream from premiering the Sonata and
the editing and first performance were left to Timothy Walker. “It was written for Julian Bream,”
Maxwell-Davies recounted to John Schneider in 1986, “but then he had an accident and really
damaged his hand very badly.”235 Bream was certainly aware that Davies’ style might prove too
large or abstract for the instrument when he recounted to Tony Palmer in A Life on the Road:
I’ve known Max for 20 years now […] somehow I've never felt that his musical
language would fit naturally onto the guitar. […] But having heard some of Max's
more recent works, I felt he was in a musical period of his life when he was
writing music that might be suitable and indeed even work well on the guitar.
In the note accompanying Hill Runes, even Davies expresses this difficulty, saying “I set myself
the problem of writing a guitar solo […] without overtones of Spain, so often evoked by the
guitar, while at the same time writing idiomatically for the instrument.”236
Ultimately, guitarists are the benefactors of these three works of a great composer who
has channeled his musical voice, unadulterated, onto the instrument. David Harvey claims the
piece Hill Runes is “an example from a new generation of guitar music: works which make great

234
David Harvey, “‘Hill Runes,’” Tempo, no. 149, New Series (June 1, 1984): 18.
235
Schneider, John and Maxwell-Davies, Peter, “Peter Maxwell-Davies: Interviewed by John Schneider,” Guitar
Review (Spring 1986): 4.
236
Peter Maxwell Davies, Hill Runes: For Guitar Solo (London ; New York: Boosey & Hawkes, 1983).
80
technical and expressive demands on their performers, extending the technique of the
instrument.”237
Hill Runes (1981)
"Runes are a kind of secret writing - secret writing in the hills, if you like. It's really
music about the loneliness of the hills […]”
-Peter Maxwell-Davies238
Maxwell-Davies’ Hill Runes contains some of the most challenging and dense music in
the entire Bream repertoire, and is often divisive among performers: many adore the piece, and
others find it impossible to understand. For instance, Eliot Fisk says of the piece, “I find [Hill
Runes to be] totally inscrutable. I cannot penetrate that at all,”239 while David Tanenbaum finds
Hill Runes to be “a terrific piece.”240
Hill Runes is composed in five linked sections with the tempo markings: I Adagio-Allegro
moderato-moderato; II Allegro; III Vivace, Scherzando; IV Adagio molto; V Allegro molto-
Adagio-tempo I-Adagio subito. In his article Hill Runes for the periodical Tempo, David Harvey
describes the structure of the piece:
The basic plan is of alternately fast and slow movements, the Adagio of I serving
as an introduction to the more substantial Allegro moderato, and the varying
tempo of II tending towards slower rather than faster music. The third and fourth
movements act as foils to the larger and more complex structures of I and V and
the instability of II, in the vivace through a patterned rhythm, progressively more
regular metre, and a transparent sectional form using restatements of the opening
theme with octave displacements (Ex. 4), and in the Adagio molto through a
passacaglia construction, an eight-bar theme in two contrapuntal voices elaborated
by the successive addition of parts, firstly a bass, then a treble. Between these
statements comes first a codetta, then an interlude which suggests a more
traditional passacaglia genre in the descending fourth A-G-F-E prominent in the

237
Harvey, “‘Hill Runes,’” 18.
238
Walker, Timothy, Cooper, Colin, and Maxwell-Davies, Peter, “Sir Peter Maxwell-Davies: In Conversation with
Timothy Walker (Part 2),” Classical Guitar 6, no. 5 (November 1987): 20.
239
240
81
lowest part (and perhaps provides another memory of Spain). Elements of the
interlude are combined with the “codetta” music to conclude the movement.241
As stated above, the harmonic, metric and melodic material in Hill Runes is incredibly
dense. Fortunately, the article on the piece by David Harvey is fantastic. It is both thorough and
accurate and will give any performer an excellent sense of the inner workings of the piece.
Harvey’s closing statement succinctly summarizes Hill Runes place in the modern guitar
repertoire:
Hill Runes is an example from a new generation of guitar music: works which
make great technical and expressive demands on their performers, extending the
technique of the instrument in a way which parallels, perhaps, the
“transcendental” expansion of piano technique in the 19th century. More than this,
it is an entirely characteristic statement on the part of its composer, recreating the
harmonic richness of his recent works in terms of the guitar, rather than
accommodating it to the instrument's supposed limitations.242
Performer’s Note
Performing Hill Runes is not for the faint of heart. Bream claimed that before the editing
process “some of it [was] just unplayable.”243 A cursory glance through the score will reveal a
plethora of difficulties both technical and musical. The technical difficulties include: thick
chords voicing that require a great deal of finger independence; sections that require tremendous
velocity; repeated notes; and artificial harmonics, some that require two harmonics played
simultaneously.
Besides the imagination required to craft a compelling interpretation, any guitarist
interested in performing Hill Runes must also possess a wide dynamic range that can
accommodate both ppp and fff dynamic markings. Also, the composer asks that much of the
piece be played very quietly and many of the chord shapes and counterpoint lie on the bass
strings which makes it exceedingly difficult to minimize squeaks, clicks, and buzzes.
Although Hill Runes is difficult, both musically and technically, its true merit lies in its
“otherness.” “I can’t think of another piece that makes the guitar sound like that,” David

241
Harvey, “‘Hill Runes,’” 16.
242
Ibid., 18.
243
82
Tanenbaum said in an interview conducted for this treatise, “no other piece has that kind of
counterpoint on the bass strings; it’s a whole new sound.” He concluded by saying, “of the pieces
Davies wrote for the guitar, it is by far my favorite; the most interesting.”244
In Julian Bream: A Life on the Road, Julian Bream offers an extended description of his
preparation of Hill Runes:
So I spent a solid two weeks doing nothing else but learning that piece. I
took the difficult passages and turned them into exercises for myself,
because there were so many unusual figurations that I'd never come across
before, certain combinations of fingers moving across the strings, that I
could actually make a good study of these problems and, in doing so,
improve my own technique. And as I did this, I began to get interested in
the music, in the musical shape that he wanted. And then I began to see the
musical colour he had in mind; the rhythmic inflections, the pathos, the
melancholy, the humour, the drama-all those human feelings that have
nothing to do with the abstraction of notes on a piece of paper. And only
at that point, because I could play the piece with my fingers, because the
mechanics were working, did I find out eventually what the music and
what Max finally wanted to say. Admittedly, he had written down
exactly what he wanted; but not until I had found a way of playing what
he wanted, not just the notes, but the whole spirit of the piece, could I make
the piece come alive, could I make the music communicate something to
other people. And the original key to this initial understanding on my part,
was finding the right
fingering.245
Michael Berkeley – Sonata in One Movement (1982)
Michael Berkeley (b. 1948)
Michael Berkeley began composing music at the age of six in imitation of his father, the
composer Lennox Berkeley, and his godfather Benjamin Britten.246 His initial instruction in
music began when he became a chorister at Westminster in London. Berkeley entered The Royal
Academy and studied composition, voice and piano. After graduation, he sought work as a
broadcaster at the BBC with no intention of becoming a composer. However, in his late twenties,

244
245
246
“Michael Berkeley Biography,” Michael Berkeley: Composer & Broadcaster, accessed August 22, 2015,
http://www.michaelberkeley.co.uk/biography.
83
Berkeley was inspired to make composition his full-time career during a period of intense study
with Richard Rodney Bennett.247
Berkeley’s early works display the influence of Bennett, especially the String Trio and
Fantasia concertante. In 1977, Mediatations for string orchestra won the Guiness Prize for
Composition and broadcast Berkeley’s talents to the listening public. In 1983, through a
commission from The London Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Berkeley composed the seminal
work of his early period,248 the oratorio Or Shall We Die? The work was graced with a libretto
by the famed English novelist Ian McEwan, which was written in reaction to the nuclear arms
race between the United States and Russia.249 Memorable works from the later part of
Berkeley’s career include the operas Jane Eyre and, most recently, For You (2013) whose
libretto was also penned by Ian McEwan.250
For the last 20 years, Berkeley has produced the BBC radio program Private Passions
from his home. The show features various guests, mostly non-musicians, speaking about the
music they love. Guests have included the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Bird and Stephen
Fry.251
Throughout his career, Berkeley has received many awards and honors for his work as a
composer and broadcaster. He was the Artistic Director of the Cheltenham Festival from 1995
until 2005 and in 2012 was given the title of Commander of the British Empire. He was
subsequently made a non-party political member of the House of Lords in 2013. His recent
works include an Oboe Quintet and Three Rilke Sonnets written for singer and instrumental
ensemble.252
Michael Berkeley and the Guitar

247
Malcolm Miller, “Berkeley, Michael,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press,
248
Ibid.
249
Ibid.
250
“Michael Berkeley Biography.”
251
“Private Passions on BBC Radio 3, Presented by Michael Berkeley,” Michael Berkeley: Composer &
Broadcaster, accessed August 22, 2015, http://www.michaelberkeley.co.uk/private-passions.
252
“Michael Berkeley Biography.”
84
Michael Berkeley has composed four works for the solo guitar: Lament (1979), Worry
Beads (1979), Sonata in One Movement (1982) and Impromptu (1983). Of the four pieces, two
bear a connection to Julian Bream. Although not specifically dedicated to Bream, Impromptu
was composed on the occasion of the guitarist’s 50th birthday party. The story of its composition
goes as follows: Berkeley was invited to the celebration, but on the day of the event with no gift
to present Bream, he composed Impromptu during the day before the party. The bass line of the
piece features the notes B, E and A from the guitarist’s last name.253
Unlike Impromptu, Sonata in One Movement is a product of the concentrated efforts of
both Berkeley and Bream over a longer period of time. The piece was specifically written for
Bream through a commission from the BBC Transcription Service in 1982. According to
Andrew Burt in his liner notes to the premiere recording on Chandos Records:
before putting pen to paper, Berkeley consulted closely with Bream, talking to
him about the guitar and in particular exploring with him its less-used sonorities.
[…] In the course of these sessions, Berkeley became interested in the
possibilities of juxtaposing low chords with high harmonics, and this furnished a
central idea of the piece.254
Sonata in One Movement
The only existing analysis of Sonata in One Movement is provided by Andrew Burn in
his liner notes to The Guitar Works of Lennox and Michael Berkeley. Of the basic form and
thematic material and form of the Sonata he stated:
The initial gesture of a major third with a falling fourth above it creates a ‘blue’
note, major/minor tension which is exploited throughout the sonata. Its one-
movement arch-like structure […] builds from a slow section with a quasi-
improvisatory feel […] to a wistful, lyrical melody […]. The fast section which
follows constitutes the core of the work and is marked by rhythmic vitality and
percussive effects. The apex of the arch is reached in a reflective passage, after
which a sunny scherzo-like section in waltz time leads to the recapitulation of the
work’s opening and a return of the lyrical tune. In the short coda Berkeley
rearranges the opening notes one final time before the sonata comes to an
emphatic end.255

253
Liner notes from Craig Ogden et al., “Guitar works by Lennox and Michael Berkeley” (2004), accessed August
22, 2015, http://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com.
254
Ibid.
255
Ibid., 8.
85
Although brief, Burn’s analysis is sound. The dramatic tension throughout the piece is
often created through modal mixture. This modal mixture appears in the opening gesture, shown
in Example 34, which features a G major triad in the bass with a falling fourth from E-flat to B-
flat in the melody. Another example of tension created by modal mixture occurs at measure 67,
shown in Example 35, before the beginning of the fast section at measure 75.
Example 34: M. Berkeley, Sonata in One Movement, mm. 1-3
'Sonata in One Movement'

by Michael Berkeley, edited by Julian Bream
Example 35: M. Berkeley, Sonata in One Movement, mm. 67

The faster ‘core’ section begins with a reiteration of the falling fourth theme, shown in
Example 36, but transposes it down a fourth, beginning now on B-flat and falling to F.
86
Example 36: M. Berkeley, Sonata in One Movement, mm. 76-78

At measure 232, the waltz gives way to a restatement of the lyrical melody in A major from the
beginning. A type of recapitulation, this section brings back familiar material from the
improvisatory opening. The ever-present motive of a major third on G major with a falling fourth
in G minor makes its final appearance in measure 246 and is followed by a short coda that ends
the piece ambiguously on an open fifth E chord.
Performer’s Note
Sonata in One Movement is cleverly and idiomatically written for the guitar. It is curious
that Bream chose not to record it, although he did perform the piece at his annual Wigmore Hall
concert in February of 1983 and carefully edited the score for publication.256 As stated in the in
Andrew Burns’ note above, Berkeley was “interested in the possibilities of juxtaposing low
chords with high harmonics,” and one can be almost certain that including this “Bream
specialty” had to be included at the guitarist’s behest.257
Due to truly stellar editing work by Bream, most of the difficult passages in the Sonata sit
quite comfortably in the fingers. Passages like the one shown in Example 37 featuring intervallic
leaps and a high harmonic are made easy by expertly chosen fingerings. In this case, all of the
notes can be played in one position by the left hand and with a simple arpeggio pattern in the
right. Ultimately, Bream’s editing is a great asset to the work’s playability and should make the
piece attractive to perspective performers.

256
257
Michael Berkeley, Sonata in one movement: for solo guitar (London: Oxford University Press, 1983).
87
Example 37: M. Berkeley, Sonata in One Movement, mm. 17

Michael Berkeley’s Sonata in One Movement is rarely played and has only received a
single commercial recording made by the Australian guitarist Craig Ogden. It is a smartly
composed piece with content of a consistently high quality written by an established composer
with a mature and confident style. In addition, Bream’s clever editing makes the Sonata seem as
if it were written by a guitarist. This piece fits easily into the repertoire of any guitarist looking
for an accessible yet challenging and under-performed modern Sonata.
Michael Tippett – The Blue Guitar (1982-1983)
Michael Tippett (1905-1998)
Michael Tippett was one of the preeminent English composers of the twentieth century.
Tippett began his musical study at the piano as a child and later attended the Royal Academy of
Music as a composition student. Tippett did not show great promise as a student and spent many
years honing his compositional technique. In his article for Grove Music Online, David Clarke
said, “His early student works demonstrate just how long the road would be to becoming a
professional composer, and, remarkably, to what extent his eventual attainment of that goal was
the result of sheer hard work and application rather than ‘innate’ ability.”258 He was an avid

258
David Clarke, “Tippett, Sir Michael,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press, n.d.),
88
promoter of many political causes, including Communism and Pacifism, of which he makes
reference to in his works.259
Tippett’s early compositions including the First Piano Sonata are marked by the
influence of Beethoven, yet as he approached compositional maturity his works began to adopt a
more personal style. In his article for Grove Music Online, David Clarke provides a description
of Tippett’s evolution through each of his stylistic periods:
In his first period the salvage and regeneration of materials and aesthetic
conceptions from the past–most particularly elements of the English Renaissance
and Baroque, and Beethoven–was central. But even in his works of the 1960s and
after, such a process continued, only now with music of his own times. After
reaching a peak of stylistic experimentation in the earlier 1970s, Tippett’s style
began to look back to the lyricism and diatonicism of the earlier works. While
these features with which he purged the extremes of the intervening period, may
not have marked as decisive a style change as that around 1960, they nevertheless
provide evidence for the emergence of a late period towards the end of the
1980s.260
Michael Tippett excelled in many compositional genres throughout his career, but in an
article on Tippett for Classical Guitar, Allan Jones says, “Any discussion of Tippet's work must
centre on the four operas. These stand as landmarks in his musical development, and his non-
operatic works are often best understood in relation to them.” Tippett composed five operas that
are indeed milestones in his career: The Midsummer Marriage, King Priam, The Knot Garden,
The Ice Break and New Year. Other important works include the early oratorio A Child of Our
Time, Mask of Time and the four Symphonies. Throughout his career, Michael Tippett was
honored with numerous awards including Knighthood in 1966. He died in London in 1998.261
The Blue Guitar
The Blue Guitar is Michael Tippett’s only work for guitar. According to Tippett’s preface
to the performing edition, “[the piece] was written for Julian Bream and commissioned by the

259
Ibid.
260
Ibid.
261
Paul Griffiths and Arnold Whittall, “Tippett, Sir Michael (Kemp),” ed. Alison Latham, The Oxford Companion to
Music, Oxford Music Onlin (Oxford University Press, n.d.), accessed September 10, 2015,
89
Ambassador International Cultural Foundation in celebration of the tenth anniversary of
Ambassador Auditorium, Pasadena, California. The world premiere was given by Julian Bream
at the Ambassador Auditorium on November 9th 1983.”
In the same preface, Tippett describes how Wallace Steven’s poem The Man with the
Blue Guitar was his primary inspiration in composing The Blue Guitar:
Reading the poem acted for me roughly as the sight of Picasso’s picture did for
the poet. But of course, all the words and concepts have disappeared and this
piece for guitar is essentially music. It could quite properly be appreciated solely
as a short sonata. All that remained from the poem were three moods, or gestures,
which suggested titles for the movements:
Transforming: Being the lion in the lute

Before the lion locked in stone
Dreaming: …Morning is not sun,

It is this posture of the nerves,
As if a blunted player clutched

The nuances of the blue guitar
Juggling: … the old fantoche

Hanging his shawl upon the wind.262
Perhaps the most helpful guide to performing the piece is guitarist Orlando Roman’s
treatise A Performer’s Guide to The Blue Guitar.263 In this treatise, Roman compiles all of the
most relevant scholarship on the piece, and presents a thorough analysis of each of the
movements.
David Tanenbaum and Michael Tippett
In an interview conducted for this treatise, David Tanenbaum recalled a concert in which
he performed The Blue Guitar for Michael Tippett:

262
Michael Tippett and Julian Bream, The Blue Guitar: Sonata for Solo Guitar = Sonate Für Sologitarre (London ;
New York: Schott, 1985).
263
Orlando Roman, “Performer’s Guide to Michael Tippett’s The Blue Guitar,” Electronic Theses, Treatises and
Dissertations (April 25, 2003), http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/etd/1842.
90
I'll tell you one Tippett story. I was playing at the Michael Tippett Center in Bath
and it was an important concert. Just given that alone it was important, but it was
also being recorded for BBC 3 live. And, of course, I really wanted to nail it and I
worked especially hard for months to prepare for that concert. So, I get out there
and I'm playing, now I have to say, I never scold audiences the way Segovia did, I
never tell them what to do, but as I'm playing, there's clearly someone chomping
away on gum in the first row. I'm playing and there's this rhythm that's just going
[makes sound] like that. Of course the movement is so long, so I just made a
mental note to myself like, at the end of this movement you've got to look up and
at least try to get this person to put the gum away because this is on tape, it's live,
it's got to be disturbing listeners; it's just nuts! So I finish the movement and I
look up and it`s Tippett himself. He's sitting front-row center and he's got this big
smile on his face and he's just chomping away on the gum. And, of course, I can't
tell him to stop so on that recording you can hear the gum in the background
[laughs].264
Performer’s Note
For the performer, one of the central questions when preparing The Blue Guitar is: in
which order should the movements be played? In his treatise, Orlando Roman states:
It is important to note that the published order of the movements (Transforming –
Dreaming – Juggling) was not the order that Tippett intended. Julian Bream
persuaded him to reverse the order of the second and third movements before the
premiere and that is how it was performed and indeed published.265
Indeed, in an interview conducted for this treatise, David Tanenbaum agrees, recalling a specific
conversation he had with Michael Tippett where the composer said to him:
I worked with Bream very extensively on this piece, we spent a lot of time, a
whole summer, on this piece and Julian insists that the movement that I want to be
second has to be third, the fast movement Juggling. But I really don’t like it that
way. I want the slow movement [to end the piece].266
Although Tippett later asked that the order be reversed, one must remember that when
preparing the performing edition with Bream, he found the reversed order to be compelling

264
265
Roman, “Performer’s Guide to Michael Tippett’s The Blue Guitar,” 35.
266
91
enough to merit publication as such. David Tanenbaum, who has performed the piece
extensively, said of Bream’s order:
Bream had an instinct with audiences and he thought there was no way. It almost
ends with a question, it fades out. There’s almost nothing there and he thought, he
had certainly been through the wars with new music with people walking out, and
he wanted to make things work. He clearly thought it had to end with the fast
movement.267
However, Tanenbaum makes a compelling argument for Tippett’s original order:
The problem is that the first movement is so long; it’s like 10 minutes, and it’s
moderate tempo. So to have that and then to have a long slow second movement, I
felt that you were going to lose the audience doing that more so than if you were
ending slow. 268
Ultimately, performers are left with a curious choice: should one honor the composer’s
later request or the original published order? In my opinion, either option is valid and is truly up
to the taste of the performer. The answer can only be found through experimenting with
performance order and monitoring the reactions of the audience.
“I think Bream is a brilliant and courageous editor,” David Tanenbaum said in an
interview, “he is not intimidated by composers, and he would really make big changes and push
very hard for those to be accepted by the composer.”269 In playing The Blue Guitar, it becomes
obvious how much time and effort Bream invested in making complex works by non-guitarist
composers work on the instrument.
The Blue Guitar is a dense and complex piece. The piece provides the performer with a
multitude of technical challenges including: difficult rhythms, scale and arpeggio passages that
must be executed at high velocity and extended use of percussive effects. Several characteristic
“Bream” techniques are featured prominently including artificial harmonics and large, sweeping
arpeggios that require the played to “drag” fingers across the strings. Additionally, many of the
piece’s difficulties are due to unidiomatic writing for the instrument: uncommon counterpoint,
awkward chord shapes and melodic passages that cross multiple strings.

267
Ibid.
268
Ibid.
269
Ibid.
92
Although these technical challenges are daunting, Bream’s editing work is truly
admirable. He provides fingerings in nearly every bar of the piece, which almost always mitigate
the difficulty of Tippett’s writing. An example occurs in measures 85 and 86 of Transforming,
shown below in Example 38. Bream finds a fingering for an angularly contoured passage that
can be played with simple arpeggio fingering in the right hand, and by finding a left hand
fingering that minimizes shifting. Although it is not certain, it is easy to imagine Bream
convincing Tippett to slightly alter certain passages, like this one, to facilitate legato and
consistent tempo.
Example 38: Tippett, The Blue Guitar, “Transforming,” mm. 85-86
Michael Tippett THE BLUE GUITAR

Copyright © 1982-1983 by Schott Music Ltd., London
All Rights Reserved
Canadian agent for Schott Music Ltd., London
Tōru Takemitsu – All in Twilight (1987), Muir Woods from In the Woods (1995)
Tōru Takemitsu was the best-known Japanese composer of his generation–bringing aspects of
Eastern and Western traditions together–yet he remained something of an elusive figure.
-Peter Burt270
Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996)
Takemitsu’s educational background is different from most composers of his era. Due to
political restrictions, he was not exposed to Western music until he was 14 years old when he
entered military service. The first Western music he ever heard was the French chanson Parlez-

270
Burt, Peter, The Music of Tōru Takemitsu (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), Abstract.
93
moi d’amour, which he found deeply moving.271 Although he had no musical training besides a
handful of lessons in composition, Takemitsu decided at the age of 16 to pursue composition as a
career.
Takemitsu was nearly entirely self-taught, but found early inspiration in the music of
Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen. After a period of intense study, Takemitsu began to
achieve significant early successes. Igor Stravinsky called Takemitsu’s Requiem for strings, a
piece written when Takemitsu was 27 years old, “a masterpiece.”272
According to Yoko Narazaki and Masakata Kanazawa in their article on Takemitsu for
Grove Music Online, “[the] characteristic elements of Takemitsu’s musical language [are] modal
melodies emerging from a chromatic background [and] the suspension of regular metre and an
acute sensitivity to register and timbre.”273 These characteristics are present in Takemitsu’s first
work for solo guitar Folios (1974).
Another important influence on Takemitsu’s work was his friendship with the American
composer John Cage. “It was largely through my contact with John Cage that I came to
recognize the value of my own tradition,”274 Takemitsu later said. Soon, Takemitsu began to
incorporate traditional elements into his works, and many of his works after 1966 include
traditional Japanese instruments including the Biwa and the Shakuhachi.
At the time of his death in 1996, Tōru Takemitsu was among the most important
composers of the late 20th century and the most prominent Japanese composer of his generation.
His awards and appointments are too numerous to list in full, but the highlights include: the 1994
Grawemeyer Award; the 1958 Prix Italia; the role of featured composer at the Aldeburgh,
Tanglewood and Wien Modern festivals; honorary memberships in The American Institute of
Arts and Letters the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; and guest lecturer positions at
Columbia and Yale Universities.275

271
Yoko Narazaki and Masakata Kanazawa, “Takemitsu, Tōru,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford
University Press, n.d.), accessed August 20, 2015,
272
Ibid.
273
Ibid.
274
Ibid.
275
Ibid.
94
Takemitsu and the Guitar
Takemitsu was great admirer of the guitar, and was an amateur guitarist himself. David
Tanenbaum recalled Takemitsu owning “two beautiful Ramirez guitars,”276 on which he worked
out the details of his guitar works. Julian Bream once said that, “[even] with his supreme mastery
of orchestration, it came as a delightful surprise when one day he said to me that of all the
instruments that he writes for, the guitar was the one he loves the most.”277
Takemitsu wrote several works for guitar, including works for guitar and orchestra. The
original works that feature guitar are: Folios (1974), Toward the Sea (1981) for guitar and alto
flute, To the Edge of a Dream (1983) for guitar and orchestra, Vers l’arc en-ciel, Palma (1987)
for guitar, oboe d’amour and orchestra, All in Twilight (1987), Equinox (1993), In the Woods
(1996), A Piece for Guitar, For the 60th birthday of Sylvano Bussotti (1991) and Bad Boy for
guitar duo. Additionally, Takemitsu arranged a number of popular songs and jazz standards for
the instrument.
Takemitsu’s love of the guitar led to more than the composition of new works for the
instrument. He formed close relationships with many of the leading classical guitarists of the late
twentieth century, composing works for Julian Bream, John Williams and Manuel Barrueco
among others. According to guitarist David Tanenbaum, Takemitsu organized a guitar festival in
Japan in the early 90s and invited both Tanenbaum and Barrueco to perform. The festival
culminated in an attempt to convince the perpetually shy and retiring composer to play the guitar
himself. Here is the story as recounted by David Tanenbaum:
We all were bugging him [saying], ‘Okay Tōru, just play a little something for
us,’ and he never would. Then, the last night, there was this kind of grand finale,
kind of a big jam session with everyone from all different styles of guitar playing.
We kept nudging Takemitsu—he was drinking a fair amount of sake—and we
thought, okay, we're going to get him to play just a little bit. So, midnight hits,
and finally he slowly ambles up to the stage and we're just thinking, okay we can
finally hear Tōru play the guitar. So, he goes up on stage and he grabs the
microphone and he starts singing the blues in this incredibly small, beautiful
voice.278

276
277
Bream, Julian, “Tōru Takemitsu: An Appreciation,” Guitar Review (1996): 2.
278
95
Muir Woods from In the Woods
In the Woods was completed in 1995 and is Takemitsu’s final complete solo work for the
guitar. The piece consists of three movements, each dedicated to a different guitarist. The first
movement, Wainscott Pond – After a Painting of Cornelia Foss was dedicated to John Williams,
the second movement Rosedale is dedicated to the Japanese guitarist Kiyoshi Shomura the third
and final movment Muir Woods, is dedicated to Julian Bream.279 About In the Woods, Graham
Wade says:
As Takemitsu has commented, each title is taken from a place where there is a
beautiful forest. Rosedale Woods are in Toronto, Canada, in a quiet residential
area of the city where the trees are especially beautiful in the sunlight of early
autumn. Muir Woods are in a suburb of San Francisco where giant sequoia trees
‘extend towards heaven in the deep forest’, which reminded the composer of the
frailty of humanity in the face of nature. Takemitsu wrote Wainscot Pond after
receiving a postcard from a friend showing a picturesque landscape, but confessed
that he did not know where it was situated in the United States. In fact, Wainscot
Pond is a lake in the Hamptons, Suffolk County, in the state of New York, some
160 kilometres from Manhattan.280
Julian Bream performed the premiere of Muir Woods on October 4th, 1996 in London.281
Any guitarist interested in performing In the Woods should acquire a copy of Matthew
Dunlap’s Doctoral treatise on the piece entitled A Performer's Guide to Tōru Takemitsu's ‘In The
Woods.’282 In his treatise, Matthew Dunlap provides a detailed biographical sketch, historical
background and a thorough theoretical analysis of the entire composition.
All in Twilight
Unlike In the Woods, no single work has been dedicated solely to the analysis of
Takemitsu’s All in Twilight. However, in 2005, Professor Frank Lyons of The University of
Ulster presented a lecture at The Darwin International Guitar Festival on the guitar works of

279
Tōru Takemitsu, In the Woods: Three Pieces for Guitar (Mainz ; New York: Schott, 1996).
280
Fukuda, Shin-ichi, Tōru Takemitsu: Complete Solo Guitar Works (Japanese Guitar Music, Vol. 1), Guitar
Collection (Naxos Classical, 2014).
281
Takemitsu, In the Woods.
282
Matthew George Dunlap, Jane Piper Clendinning, and Tōru Takemitsu, “A Performer’s Guide to Tōru
Takemitsu’s In the Woods” (Florida State University, 2008), accessed August 20, 2015,
http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/etd.
96
Takemitsu, and was able to shed some light on the compositional techniques used in All in
Twilight. Three of the most relevant techniques will be presented here, those interested in further
study should review the text of Dr. Lyon’s lecture. On the inherent difficulty in analyzing
Takemitsu’s music, Professor Lyons says:
The main problem we encounter when attempting to analyze and subsequently

explain Takemitsu’s musical language is the seeming delight which he took in
mixing and matching techniques and processes gleaned from a multitude of
sources, often in the course of a single work–he was the prime example of the
musical magpie and I believe that his music is all the richer for it.283
Professor Lyons finds that while All in Twilight is formally straightforward saying “the
first and second movements follow an ABA coda design and the third and fourth follow an ABA
design where the second A section is slightly varied,”284 the harmonic and melodic content is
derived from a series of techniques that recur throughout Takemitsu’s guitar works as well as his
entire oeuvre.
The first of these techniques is the use of the octatonic scale. The Oxford Companion to
Music describes the octatonic scale as:
A succession of eight notes within the octave in which tones and semitones, or
semitones and tones, alternate. The scale came into regular use during the 19th
century, especially as a means of establishing an exotic atmosphere in Russian
Romantic music, and retained a strong influence during the 20th century, notably
in the music of Stravinsky and Messiaen.285
For clarity, look below at Figure 42 which depicts an octatonic scale beginning on F. A
prominent example of the use of the octatonic scale occurs in the opening measures of the third
movement from All in Twilight286 shown below in Example 39.

283
Lyons, Frank, “The Solo Guitar Music of Tōru Takemitsu” (presented at the Darwin International Guitar
Festival, Darwin, Australia, 2005).
284
Ibid.
285
Arnold Whittall, “Octatonic Scale,” ed. Alison Latham, The Oxford Companion to Music (Oxford University
Press, n.d.), http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e4806.
286
Lyons, Frank, “The Solo Guitar Music of Tōru Takemitsu.”
97
Figure 5: Octatonic Scale
Example 39: Takemitsu, All in Twilight, “III,” mm. 1-2
Toru Takemitsu ALL IN TWILIGHT

Copyright © 1988 by Schott Music Co. Ltd., Tokyo
All Rights Reserved
Canadian agent for Schott Music Co. Ltd., Tokyo

Another technique Takemitsu frequently uses in his music is what Frank Lyons refers to
as the “zig-zag” motive. Lyons believes that this motive is derived from the influence of Olivier
Messiaen. An example from All in Twilight is shown below in Example 40, which features large,
intervallic leaps alternating direction.
Example 40: Takemitsu, All in Twilight, “I,” mm. 47-48

All Rights Reserved
98
Another common motive that permeates All in Twilight is the “SEA” motive. Frank
Lyons states it is:
the most commonly encountered motivic figure in Takemitsu’s middle to late

periods, […]. The three-note figure in its basic form is derived from the spelling
of the word SEA in German notation giving Es (Eb)–E–A, a rising semitone
followed by an ascending fourth.287
Lyons states “the first movement of All in Twilight is saturated with the “SEA” motif, both in
basic form and variations.”288 The first statement of the “SEA” motive in All in Twilight occurs
in the second measure,289 shown in Example 41; the notes are C – D flat – A flat. The motive is
woven into a “zig-zag” pattern.

All Rights Reserved
Performer’s Notes
[Takemitsu] had an exquisite ear and exquisite sensibility, but [the guitar pieces] are
kind of like a snowflake: if you take it inside, it turns to water if you're not absolutely perfect; the
conditions have to be perfect [for them] to work.

287
Ibid.
288
Ibid.
289
Ibid.
99
-Eliot Fisk290
The guitar works of Tōru Takemitsu present the performer with a curious dichotomy: the
pieces feature exquisite sonorities, which are unique in the guitar literature: sonorities and
timbres that have been crafted by a composer with an intimate knowledge of the instrument.
However, the execution of these sonorities and timbres is often problematic because of the
intricacy of the composer’s instructions. The dynamic and expressive markings are often so
specific that the performer can feel as if one missed note will ruin an entire performance. “You
can't be off even the tiniest micro-millimeter,” Eliot Fisk said about Takemitsu’s guitar writing,
“or some note in some chord doesn't sound.”291
These same concerns are true for both Muir Woods and All in Twilight. Unlike traditional
works whose difficulties might include velocity in scales and arpeggios, these two works’
primary difficulties are: maintaining the absolute clarity of voices within dense chords; being
able to produce nearly every type of available harmonic with ease and clarity; tremendous
control over dynamics and color, especially quiet playing; and the ability to decipher a score
written in two staves with many tempo changes.
Although this description might prove sufficient, here are two examples of the type of
difficulty that is unique to Takemitsu’s guitar writing. The first example, shown in Example 42,
contains the first four measure of the first movement of All in Twilight. First, there is an unusual
time signature, which is initially 2.5/8 and shifts to 3/8 in the second measure. Second, there are
both natural and artificial harmonics that must be played in conjunction with natural notes.
Finally, there is a proliferation of expressive and dynamic markings; every note has an
instruction of some kind.

290
291
Ibid.
100
All Rights Reserved
The second example, Example 43, is taken from Muir Woods. This example exhibits
many of the difficulties of the first. For instance, consider the dynamic markings: once again,
nearly every note is attached to an expressive instruction. The added difficulty here is in
performing the chords, which are not common shapes, legato and without producing unwanted
string noise.
Example 43: Takemitsu, In the Woods, “Muir Woods,” mm. 11-14
Toru Takemitsu IN THE WOODS

All Rights Reserved
Although Takemitsu’s pieces create tremendous difficulties for the performer, they are
among the masterpieces written for the instrument. They draw sounds from the instrument that
are completely unique in the literature. “One of the most thrilling things for me, working with all
these composers,” David Tanenbaum recalled in an interview, “is that I've spent a lifetime
playing this instrument and these composers can make a sound that I haven't heard before. They
can make the instrument resonate in a way I haven't heard before, and that's just fascinating. […]
Whatever awkwardness results is my problem. I just have to work hard enough to make it
work.”292

292
101
Leo Brouwer – Sonata (1990)
Leo Brouwer (1939-)
Guitarist-Composer Leo Brouwer was born in Havana Cuba on the 1st of March 1939. He
started playing the guitar in his early teens and began composing music soon after. Largely self-
taught as a composer, he showed great promise and received a grant to study both guitar and
composition at The University of Hartford. He later went on to study composition at the Juilliard
School in New York.293
As a young guitar student in Havana, Brouwer explored both the standard classical guitar
repertoire and the early twentieth-century orchestral and chamber works of composers like
Stravinsky, Bartok and Hindemith. In the former, he found much to be desired. Of the state of
the modern guitar repertoire, Brouwer said:
Where was the Bartok of guitar? There was no Bartok of guitar ... Where was the
Concerto for Cembalo and Instruments [sic] that de Falla [wrote] […]? There was
no Octet like Stravinsky's; no Danse Sacre and Danse Profane of Debussy for
harp and strings […], all this music was a discovery for me […] and I said, I'm
going to compose for guitar […].294
Throughout his career, Brouwer attempted to remedy this dearth of modern guitar repertoire with
compositions of his own.
Brouwer’s compositional output can be divided into three periods: first, the
“nationalistic” period (1955 to 1962); the “avant-garde” period (1962-1967); and the third
period, described by the composer as “the new simplicity,” from 1980 onward.295 The first
period is a portrait of the composer in his musical adolescence: most of the pieces from this
period represent attempts to master western forms while incorporating content that reflects his
Cuban heritage. The works from this period include Fuga No. 1 and Pieza, understandably, the

293
Victoria Eli Rodríguez, “Brouwer, Leo,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press,
294
Paul Century, “Leo Brouwer: A Portrait of the Artist in Socialist Cuba,” Latin American Music Review / Revista
de Música Latinoamericana 8, no. 2 (October 1, 1987): 4.
295
Rodríguez, “Brouwer, Leo.”
102
works from this period improve rapidly after Brouwer gained a mastery of formal technique at
Juilliard.
In 1961, Brouwer attended the Autumn Music Festival in Warsaw where he was exposed
to an array of avant-garde pieces including Lutoslawski’s Jeux Vinitiens and Stockhausen’s
Zyklus. The piece that exhibited the most profound effect on him was Penderecki’s Threnody to
the Victims of Hiroshima,296 which directly influenced the composition of Brouwer’s own La
Espiral Eterna (1971).
From 1980 onward, Brouwer’s compositions have been written in a style the composer
himself refers to as either “the new simplicity”297 or “hyper-romanticism.”298 In his thesis on the
characteristics that define each of Brouwer’s compositional periods, the composer and scholar
Nick Norton says of the use of tonality in this period: “the harmonic language of this phase
seemingly regresses to the tonal one of his first period, with chromaticism again used solely for
color or effect, rather than as a central feature.”299 He adds that Brouwer continues to infuse his
music with the Latin rhythms of his youth and that the most accurate way to describe Brouwer’s
third style period is as a synthesis of the nationalistic and avant-garde style periods. “It seems
more pertinent,” Norton says, “to instead consider the trajectory of his work as following a
single, linear continuum.”300
Sonata
Leo Brouwer’s Sonata was composed in 1990 and given its premiere performance by
Julian Bream on the 27th of January of the following year at London’s Wigmore Hall.301 The
second half of this concert was devoted entirely to works written for Bream including
Takemitsu”s All in Twilight and Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland, Op. 70. Classical

296
Ibid.
297
Ibid.
298
Century, “Leo Brouwer,” 10.
299
Norton, Nick, “Characteristics Defining the Three Compositional Periods in the Solo Guitar Music of Leo
Brouwer,” Nick Norton: Composer, n.d., accessed October 14, 2015, http://nickwritesmusic.com/characteristics-
defining-the-three-compositional-periods-in-the-solo-guitar-music-of-leo-brouwer/.
300
Ibid.
301
103
Guitar issued a generally favorable review asserting that the ending was a perfect opportunity to
“manifest a sort of virtuosic impetuosity which [culminates] in a dashing fashion […]”302
The first movement Fandangos y Boleros begins with a brief Preambulo, which
eventually gives way to a Danza section that juxtaposes the rhythm of the Spanish Fandango
with the Bolero, a traditional Cuban love-song. This movement includes a quotation from the
Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven of which Brouwer has said: “the fragmented form of
Fandangos y Boleros [is similar] to the fragmented sonata form found in the first movement of
Beethoven’s famous Pastoral Symphony.”303
The second movement, entitled Sarabanda de Scriabin pays homage to its namesake’s
mysterious and sometimes mystically-inspired compositions. Brouwer asks the performer to tune
the guitar’s low E- string to F in order to facilitate a greater degree of tone color.
The Sonata culminates in the Toccata de Pasquini witch employs brilliant arpeggiated
figures and explosive coloristic effects. The Toccata is an homage to the Italian Baroque
composer Bernardo Pasquini, specifically the harpsichord solo Toccata con lo Scherzo del
Cucco, which imitates the sound of the Cuckoo bird. Brouwer uses the same texture as Pasquini:
arpeggiated, arabesques with two-note interjections above, shown in Figures 40 and 41.
Example 44: Pasquini, Toccata con lo Scherzo del Cucco, mm. 1-3

302
Ibid.
303
Graham Anthony Devine, Leo Brouwer: Guitar music, Vol. 3 ([S.l.]: Naxos, 2003).
104
Example 45: Brouwer, Sonata, “Toccata de Pasquini,” mm. 1-3
Performer’s Notes
Julian Bream performed Brouwer’s Sonata regularly, season after season, for five years
between 1991 and 1995. At the Wigmore Hall premiere and soon thereafter, he programmed the
piece in the middle of the second half of each concert, usually between more established pieces
from his modern repertoire. After realizing the Sonata’s ability to engage audiences due to its
coloristic diversity and exciting and ear-catching virtuosity, Bream began using the piece as a
barnstorming concert closer (Wade 160-166).
In the 25 years since its composition, the Brouwer Sonata has become a fixture on
concert programs around the world. The piece is a common requirement for both auditions and
international guitar competitions. While only accessible to the advanced player, the piece is not
beyond the reach of most graduate students and, particularly for students who lack velocity in
their playing, learning the Sonata could prove to be pedagogically beneficial.
The primary difficulties in learning the Sonata are: properly counting and executing the
rythyms; achieving the timbral and coloristic effects indicated by the composer, including a
number of harmonics and several crucial Bartok pizzicati in the final movement; and achieving
the necessary velocity to perform the first and third movements at an appropriate tempo.
105
CHAPTER 3

CONCLUSION
This treatise presents a survey of the solo pieces written for Julian Bream and has
illuminated their historical significance and lasting importance to the guitar repertoire. For each
piece, this treatise has provided a brief biographical sketch of the composer, a survey of relevant
academic literature and, where necessary, has contributed a brief theoretical analysis.
Additionally, this treaitse has provided a “Performer’s Note” that details the specific difficulties
of performing each piece.
Through reviewing the introductory material, reading the interviews conducted with
various performers in the appendix and by exploring the chapters on each of the pieces, the
reader will gain a greater appreciation and understanding of the pieces written for Julian Bream
and of Bream’s contribution to the classical guitar community through procuring these works.
Hopefully, this treatise will inspire guitarists to study and perform pieces from this repertoire,
especially those that are not part of the standard repertory.
The most fitting close to this treatise is a quote given by David Tanenbaum in an
interview conducted for this treatise, “None of us will make a contribution that will match Julian
Bream, and I certainly won't either. There's such a repertoire that he's given us, [that he’s]
created […] [I can’t compare myself to Bream], that would be totally unfair, I'm not even
anywhere in that ballpark.”304

304
106
APPENDIX A
INTERVIEWS
Interview with David Starobin, conducted by e-mail on July 29th 2015
MM: What is your professional relationship with Julian Bream?
DS: He is an admired senior colleague. I've known his work since I started playing, and felt that
his was always an interesting, forward thinking voice. Personally, I've had a chance to spend
time with him at his home, we've had dinners in Manhattan, and I've presented him for a concert
and master classes while I directed the Augustine Series at Manhattan School of Music. I once
published a review in the form of a poem (dedicated to him) of one of his New York concerts!
MM: Do you have a professional relationship with any of the composers who wrote for Bream?
DS: Not close relationships. I corresponded with Humphrey Searle in the early 70s. Searle sent
me “Two Practical Cats” which I later made the first recording of; I was on a friendly basis with
Richard Rodney Bennett (I read through sketches in Baltimore for him while he was writing the
guitar concerto, later played it, and will conduct it this year.) I saw Richard Rodney occasionally
in New York in later years. I had some correspondence and met Brouwer, Henze, and Peter
Maxwell Davies.
MM: In your opinion, what is the significance of the body of work written for Bream to the
classical guitar community and to the classical music community as a whole?
DS: There are at least a handful of truly excellent works among the works composed for Julian
and several other really good ones. For one player to have been responsible for bringing this
level of composition into the repertoire earns Julian his rightful place among the Saints of the
guitar. These are the kinds of works that help to give the guitar its place among instruments with
valuable solo repertoire, thereby insuring its future.
MM: Is there a piece (or pieces) from his commissioned repertoire that you feel is (are)
especially significant? If so, why?
DS: Of the solo works, the Walton, Britten and L. Berkeley pieces are very significant. Each is
inspired and well-composed; each represents the composers' voice beautifully transferred to the
instrument; and each has proven to be a vehicle that numerous players have chosen to play and
work on to sustain a developing tradition of interpretation. Among the concertos, Malcolm
Arnold's is original and inspired. My favorites of all these works, though, are the two Britten
song cycles. Both are perfect vocal settings that use the guitar brilliantly to underscore and
illuminate the texts.
MM: What inspired you to begin commissioning new works for guitar?
107
DS: When I was 13 or 14 a few friends began to write for me. This would be around 1964. I've
never stopped being interested in composers and what they might create for the instrument.
MM: As an artist who has made a significant contribution to the guitar repertoire by
commissioning and performing new works, where do you think the pieces you have
commissioned fit in the modern canon of guitar works?
DS: There are quite a few pieces I regard as wonderful music. As there are hundreds of them, it's
difficult to make a general statement about how they fit in. A number of them have been taken
up, fairly widely, but it is too early to assess where they actually “fit”. Stylistically, they cover
an extremely wide range, and also range widely in combination with voice, different
instrumental ensembles and orchestra.
MM: How do the works you have commissioned compare to the Bream commissions?
DS: I've really travelled a very different path than Julian. Julian did some commissioning, but
has spent a large part of his life as a touring musician. Julian's commissions are a small (though
wonderful!) body of music. My direction was to work with a number of composers over a longer
time period, and work to have a number of them produce substantial catalogs of guitar works. I
doubt Julian had the time or inclination to do that.
MM: What are some of difficulties of the commissioning process?
DS: Finding a composer whose music you really like. Finding funds for commissioning the
composer. If the composer has not written for the guitar before: encouraging them; showing
them what works and what doesn't work on the instrument; critiquing their work when
necessary; and then, finally, if they've written a piece with promise, encouraging them to repeat
the process and write another composition.
MM: What are some of the pleasures of the commissioning process?
DS: All of the above, with the exception of finding funding!
MM: Do you think that a composer takes the playing style and/or the personality of the
performer into consideration when writing a piece for that performer?
DS: Not really. Nor would I want them to. It's the composer's personality I'm interested in
seeing on the page–not mine. The performer, who has the last word, always ends up injecting his
or her personality, no matter what is written.
MM: Do you think that any of the pieces written for Bream highlight his personality as a player?
DS: No. They seem much more about the individual voices of the composers.
MM: Why should guitarists commission and perform new works?
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DS: So that we have more excellent music to play. For every 1000 new pieces a few might
prove worthy to future players. This is how we build a repertory!
Interview with Angelo Gilardino, conducted by e-mail on August 10th 2015
MM: How did the Theme and Variations, Op. 77 come about?
AG: My main concern about guitar has always been repertoire. On 1967, Edizioni Musicali
Bèrben, an Italian publisher, decided to create a new series of 20th century guitar music and, after
a suggestion by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, entrusted me with the task of leading the new
entreprise, with acting also as an editor. With the powerful credit given to me by such a task, I
started asking composers all over the world to write new pieces for guitar, regardless of whether
they had already composed for the instrument, or not. For instance, in the case of British
composers, I asked sir Lennox, whose magnificent Sonatina I knew from ten years, and Bernard
Stevens, a very gifted and inspired composer who had never written for guitar and who, after my
request, wrote his unique composition for the instrument – “Ballad – The Bramble Briar”, a
masterpiece indeed. Within such a frame of activity, it was obvious to me asking a new piece
also to sir Lennox: I wrote a respectful letter to him, and I had the Publisher sending him, as a
sample of the quality of my work with the Bèrben-Gilardino series, the four volumes of the “24
Caprichos de Goya” by Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Sir Lennox promptly and kindly answered, and a
few weeks after I received from him the manuscript of his new piece, “Theme and Variations”,
which of course made me happy.
MM: How would you describe the musical language of the piece?
AG: Formally speaking, it is consistent with its title. Of course, from such a refined musician as
sir Lennox, one wouldn’t expect just a set of ornamental variations, and in fact he created six
little musical pieces which, retaining a thematic connection with their source, make it apparently
remote, with developing characters, forms, rhythms, harmonies, idiomatic surfaces, of their own,
with strong differences among them. Harmonically, the composer makes a very skillful use of
the tonal ground, with avoiding all the “common” situations and working always on a sort of
border line. This is allowed only to very consummated musicians.
MM: What are the difficulties in performing Berkeley’s works on the guitar?
AG: No special problem is opposed to the performer who has developed an accomplished,
classical technique. From a musical viewpoint, a lot of musical understanding is requested. His
music cannot be solved just with an instinctively musical approach.
MM: Do you feel Berkeley’s compositional style suits the guitar?
AG: It does, and perfectly. When the music calls for brilliance, shine, humor, like in the first
movement of the “Sonatina”, his writing is apparently simple, with just two elements derived
from the traditions of punteado and rasgueado; but when it turns into a meditative path, like in
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the second movement, then his writing turns toward an elaborate three voice polyphony which
goes deeply into the guitar “soul”.
MM: How does Theme and Variations, Op. 77 compare to the Sonatina Op, 52 No. 1 written for
Julian Bream and Quatre pieces pour la guitare written for Segovia?
AG: They reflect three seasons of the composer’s life. Quatre pieces are the work of a young
musician, who has already mastered the musical tools, and who is full of enthusiasm; their
connection with Spanish culture is open. Sonatina is the work of maturity, which shows the
composer’s balance between the neoclassical mainstream and his personal, very direct way of
shifting from joy to meditation, without breaking a perfect unity of style: contrasts with no
conflict. Theme and variations is a very subtle essay of sheer musical wisdom and of mild,
peaceful poetic memory: the work of a great old artist.
MM: Julian Bream performed the Theme and Variations often and recorded them for RCA on
the album 70’s; did you ever speak with him about his recording or the piece? If so, what was his
opinion on Berkeley and this piece?
AG: I never met Mr. Bream and a short exchange of correspondence between us happened only
when I rescued the manuscript of Cyril Scott “Sonatina” from the Segovia Archive; just a few
letters from each side, no mention of Berkeley’s music.
MM: You have explained the origins of Quatre pieces pour la guitare extensively in the Preface
of your edition for Berben, so I won’t address that here, but would you be willing to comment on
how the pieces relate to Berkeley’s later works for the instrument?
AG: Even if written when he was young, and a student of Nadia Boulanger in Paris, those early
pieces are perfectly accomplished in the classical measure of the further guitar works. The
difference stands in atmosphere, kind of inspiration and intellectual filters. The three solo guitar
works can be seen as a sequence of a process, which passed through a slow evolution with no
revolution.
MM: Would you agree that guitarists have a unique perspective on the works of Lennox
Berkeley considering we have compositions from every stage of his life as a composer
(Beginning with the Quatre pieces and ending with the Guitar Concerto)?
AG: Oh yes, I do. I am in wait of a recording of all what he wrote for guitar, including his
splendid “Songs of the Half Light” for voice and guitar.
Interview with David Tanenbaum, conducted by phone on August 21st 2015
MM: What is your professional relationship with Julian Bream? How do you know him?
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DT: Well, we never worked together professionally, but I know him through various encounters
throughout his career: a few dinners together, correspondence. I remember when I first met him.
I was a brash young guy and he had just played a concert and it was - I think it was 1977 - and I
walked up to him and congratulated him on his wonderful concert and I said to him: 'there's this
fantastic piece by Tōru Takemitsu called Folios and I don't understand why you're not playing it.'
And he looked at me and he said 'who are you?' [laughs] And so I told who him who I was and
he said, 'it's interesting because I think that's a fantastic piece and I actually have it in my
suitcase on this tour.' I'm not aware that Bream ever did play that piece, but I somehow got his
attention with that question. Just one of the many times I corresponded with him or met him.
Bream actually used to call me 'Tany-boy' for Tanenbaum [laughs].
MM: That's great... So, the composers that wrote for Bream that I know you to have a
professional relationship with, who have written pieces for you are Henze, Takemitsu, Brouwer
and Maxwell Davies.
DT: That's true you'll have to add Michael Tippett to that.
MM: In your opinion, what is the significance of the body of work written for Bream to the
classical guitar community and to the classical music community as a whole?
DT: In my opinion it's invaluable. We had Segovia whose contribution was of course invaluable
as well and Segovia was the first to figure out--he was basically the first guitarist, the first great
guitarist to not compose himself. And he said at the beginning of his career 'my kingdom for a
repertoire.' And he was the first to figure out that he was going to have to go to composers who
didn't play the guitar necessarily, but really to enrich the repertoire. So in the beginning of his
career he did transcriptions of only the great masters of the past, but he started, you know, he
started in Spain with the people around him like Torroba and Turina and then he branched out.
And he eventually got over 500 pieces. You could make the argument, and I think it's true, that
he did not eventually share the with some of the greatest composers of his time. He never got
Bartok, Ravel or Stravinsky... Shostakovich. There are many reasons for these, but it's just the
way it went. And so when Bream came along I think the stage was set to create repertoire from
great composers and I think Bream took the vital next step of working with the greatest
composers of his time. And in some cases he worked with people like Lutoslawski, he didn't
even get an original piece but he worked with him on an arrangement. I think this was an
invaluable contribution it wasn't as much repertoire as Segovia created but it catapulted us into
the mainstream of classical music. And I think the other thing that's significant is that when the
Beatles came around Segovia was already in his 70s and [The Beatles] indisputably got people
around the world more interested in the guitar. Bream on the other hand was just starting out
with his career when they showed up and when they got famous. So he was also able to benefit
from this tremendously renewed interest in the guitar and many players like myself who heard
that repertoire and loved the sound of the guitar heard the rock repertoire and loved the sound of
the guitar, but wanted something more from the guitar. And found what Bream did to be
fundamentally important.
I can just go on and tell you a little bit about my story. Which is that I came from a family of two
musicians and I was playing piano and cello. By the time I was ten I had been playing piano for
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6 years and cello for 2 or 3 years. And I heard rock and roll and just wanted to stop those
instruments and I heard a Segovia concert and I knew that's what I wanted to do but I really
didn't love some of the repertoire. I had been playing Beethoven and Mozart and I just didn't
connect with some things in the guitar repertoire and then Bream's 20th Century Guitar LP came
out and that changed everything for me. Then I realized it was possible to get this great music
onto the guitar.
MM: So it was really those pieces that you loved first?
DT: It really was. And my story is not atypical, it happened with a lot of people [...] I could tell
you one other thing. As I grew with this repertoire, it was Bream's courage with this repertoire
that moved me so much and gave me my own courage. I remember him playing Royal Winter
Music I, the first Sonata by Henze, in Alice Tully Hall and it was the second half of the program
and a good third to half of the people walked out. Those of us who were still there were
enthralled and in love with what he was doing and gave him a standing ovation. It just divided
the audience. And what moved me so much was that, the next year, he just came back with a
similarly big, complicated new piece. It didn't phase him at all that he had lost up to a half of the
audience. I wish players today had as much courage as that with new music.
MM: It's certainly not the case today...
DT: No…
MM: So, next question. As an artist who has made a significant contribution to the guitar by
having pieces written for you and by performing new works, where do you think the pieces
you've commissioned fit against the ones written for Bream and within the modern guitar canon?
Also, I understand that Henze, Terry Riley, Kernis, Sierra and Lou Harrison are the composers
that have written for you?
DT: I've worked with many composers like Sofia Gubadulina and Steve Reich, but they didn't
dedicate pieces to me. I mean, there are many others--I'm commissioning Don Byron right now--
there are many others, I could give you a big list of composers, but that's probably an acceptable
list... None of us will make a contribution that will match Julian Bream, and I certainly won't
either. There's such a repertoire that he's given us and he created, probably the most important
solo piece in our history, which is the Britten Nocturnal. So, to compare myself to Bream would
be totally unfair, I'm not even anywhere in that ballpark. However, I have created some pieces
that have become repertoire pieces. Looking back on that and doing interviews like this with
young Doctoral students like you is gratifying in that way. Probably the most popular piece that I
helped create is by Aaron Jay Kernis and it's called 100 Greatest Dance Hits. It's for string
quartet and guitar, I've recorded it twice, Barrueco's recorded it, it was just done on Monday
night at the Lincoln Center Chamber Players concert in Saratoga Springs, New York with Jason
Vieaux who's been touring with it. It's getting played alot, it's certainly had more than 100
performances worldwide, and that is a lot for a new piece. So it's really a repertoire piece. What's
great about the piece is that it is rep that we can offer to string quartets that is challenging and
interesting for them, and something they really want to play... as opposed to Boccherini, which is
nice and all that, but it doesn't compare, for instance, to playing Beethoven or Mozart. What I
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will give myself credit for is that this kind of repertoire helps guitarists move into the mainstream
of classical music. I can't tell you how many chamber music festivals I've been able to play at
because of the Kernis. A typical email or phone call will go: 'ok our players really want to do the
Kernis, what else can we do with guitar?' So, it's opened the door. I think the Terry Riley project
I initiated has become quite significant and is getting a lot of attention.It's something that I
worked on with Terry for more than a decade before I got any pieces from him. But then he fell
in love with guitar so much that he's writing a book of pieces that he calls The Book of
Abeyezzud--which is a made-up word--and he's trying to write a piece for every letter of the
Spanish alphabet. So there's a concerto in there, many chamber pieces, at least three solos and it's
a pretty significant body of repertoire. There's an article by a former student of mine named
Giacomo Fiore, who studied in Tennessee also, in the current Classical Guitar magazine about
that repertoire. The first couple of pieces were written for me the rest were written for his son
and other people.
The Lou Harrison piece that I got has a really interesting story. It's a piece that I worked on for
about a quarter of a century believe or not, for about 25 years. I just really loved Lou and what he
was about and the music he wrote and his philosophy. I always wanted a guitar piece from him
and his relationship with the guitar was a kind of fractured and fragmented one: he never really
wrote a lot, he set out to write six sonatas in 1978 and he only wrote one of them. I just always
felt like there was another piece in him. In 1997, I ran an 80th Birthday Festival of his music and
I thought: OK, here's my chance to get a guitar piece... and he said 'no' again. At that point I
almost gave up, and then out of left field someone at a festival convinced him to write me a piece
in 2002 to play at the festival. It was a guy named Charles Amercanian. What's interesting about
that piece is that Lou Told me right away: 'what I’ve figured out is that the classical guitar is the
problem I've had all these years. It's not that I haven't wanted to write for you, it's that there's
something about that instrument that doesn't sustain enough and it's not loud enough for me. So,
I have another guitar sound in mind, and I need you to help me find out what it is.' So, I went
down there with a station wagon full of guitars and he eventually picked a national steel, which
you guys in Tennessee know something about, and I said 'Lou, very few people who play
national steel will read your piece or want to play it, and classical guitarists are not going to buy
a national steel to play you piece, so what are you going to get here in terms of practicality?' And
he said 'look, I'm 83 years old. If you play it once beautifully, the way I want to hear it, I'll be
happy. I don't care about anything else but that.' And, it turned out to be the last piece that he
would ever finish. He not only wrote it for national steel, but he modified the fret board, so it
could be adjusted in a just intonation. The frets look a little Picasso-like… So, I bought a
national steel for that, with the fret modification and I thought 'OK, I'm going to have this
wonderful 10 minute piece, by Lou, and I'll play it as much as I can’ and I lugged that guitar
around to about a dozen countries and played the piece, and then it turned out that Terry Riley
heard the instrument, and he loved it, and wrote a 20 minute solo for that instrument. Since then,
there have been about 20 other composers at least who have written for that instrument. It's
something that Lou invented for his last piece. I just got a CD from a former student of mine,
Eliot Simpson in Europe; there’s been a Doctoral thesis by Giacomo about the instrument. It's
just going crazy, and it was from this one act of integrity from Lou that I actually argued against.
But it's something that I was in the middle of creating, and it's created a thing in the world. So,
one of the things I love about working with composers are the journeys you go down that are
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completely unexpected and even, in my case ill-advised, and they create something real in the
world.
MM: Wow, great answer... I suppose this ties in: Do you think that composers, when writing for
a certain player, take the personality or playing style of the performer into account when writing
the piece?
TB: That is basically the case. In most cases, I've worked pretty hard with composers to craft the
guitar language onto the instrument. I think there's a Bream line where he says 'you always want
to get a second piece from every composer who doesn't play the guitar,' and so the first piece, the
first Terry Riley piece, required an enormous amount of editing. And with Kernis' 100 Greatest
Dance Hits, we spent the whole summer faxing guitar part fragments back and forth. First of all,
I think in that editing process the player has a voice and their fingerings - things they like to do -
come into it, but I think it happens even before the act of creation as well. I think, for instance, if
you look at Takemitsu's In the Woods, the movement that's dedicated to Williams is a very
different movement than the one dedicated to Bream. I would say the short answer to that is yes,
in almost every case that I can think of.
MM: Let's move on to Henze. I've read several interviews with you, and you've spoken quite a
bit about your relationship with Henze. You've recorded both Sonatas of Royal Winter Music as
well as the Concerto, but the last interview I read with you on this topic is quite old. Is there
anything you'd care to add about Henze at this point?
DT: There are some things that I didn't say in interviews [...] I believe. Some things that he told
me about working with Bream, and I don't think I 've said these things in interviews and could
talk about that a little bit.
MM: That's another question I had, if you knew of anything Bream had requested of Henze or if
you felt that the Royal Winter Music, even the Tientos because even though they're dedicated to
Britten he certainly wrote them with Bream and Pears in mind...
DT: Oh, definitely. He wrote [Tientos] with them in mind. I'll talk about Royal Winter Music first
and I'll start by telling you about when Henze got me the manuscript to those, which I really
wanted for study, he made a very strong point to say 'look, I know you guitarists like to get these
manuscripts and play from the manuscript,' and he said 'I really advise you in general not to do
that.' He said, 'when we composers publish something, what that publication represents is the
final effort and what we want the world to see. You may get a hold of a manuscript and you
could certainly study with that the process where that became a publication, but it's not fair to
composers to just suddenly play from the manuscript; that's not what I want out in the world.
What I want out in the world is what I put out in the world.' That was interesting, and I think it's
something for guitarists to think about.
What was immediately striking when you look at those manuscripts was the difference between
the manuscript and the publication of the first Sonata, which is the one that Bream edited, is
monumental; it's just huge. The difference between the manuscript of the second and the
publication is minimal. What happened is that Bream and Henze worked, back and forth,
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dilligently. I mean really hard. They changed little details; they changed big details. If you know
the piece, the original had Opelia coming after Romeo and Juliet, and then Ariel coming after
that. They changed the order so that Ariel came third and Ophelia came fourth, because Bream
wanted a faster movement in between them. There are just pages in Oberon, the last movement,
that are just altered. Henze told me it was an exhausting and big process and anything that was
eventually changed and put in the publication was something he approved. I think Bream is a
brilliant and courageous editor. He is not intimidated by composers, and he would really make
big changes and push very hard for those to be accepted by the composer. He knew that he was
the face of this music with the public and he had great instincts about what could and couldn't
work on stage.
So, it's an amazing experience to go through that manuscript and the publication. Even if you
know the end of Ophelia ends with a minor tenth, with the G on top and an E in the bass, and it
was originally a major. They changed even that and it gives an incredibly different color to that
chord. This is the story that Henze told me: Bream felt that he had recorded the Walton
Bagatelles too quickly when he had first got them in 1971 and so he decided that with future
major pieces he was going to wait some years, perform the pieces, and then record them. He did
not record Royal Winter Music I right away, that was written in 1975 and 1976. By 1979, he felt
he was ready to record it, so he went to Henze and said, 'look, the first Sonata is basically one
side of an LP, why don't you write me a second Sonata that would fill the second side of the LP.'
That was the genesis for the second Sonata. When Bream got it he said, 'the last movement Mad
Lady Macbeth is too much. You've just simply gone too far: it's too crazy for the guitar and
we've got to get to work and really edit it,' and Henze told me that at that point he was just
exhausted by all the editing and he didn't want to go through that much again. He decided to find
another guitarist to play it. That became a break between those two. [Henze] found Reinbert
Evers who was relatively a younger guitarist at that point and was, I think, intimidated by the
great Henze, and changed very little. That's why the differences are so great.
MM: I had not heard any of that; that's fantastic.
DT: It's very interesting stuff actually [laughs]. As far as I know, and I can't back this up, but I
don't believe the Bream/Henze relationship ever got that close again after that first, kind of,
bloody editing session from Royal Winter Music I.
MM: This is something I've come up against over and over again while researching this treatise:
it's very difficult sometimes to attribute which works were written for Bream because you know
there was a relationship and then a piece will have been written and Bream doesn't edit it or ever
record it. It's interesting, this is one of the best examples of that, where I know it was dedicated
to Bream but it's edited by someone else, and of course he didn't champion it on the concert
stage. So...
DT: Yeah, Bream did not think that the last movement worked for the public. He thought, it has
something like 22 tempo changes and he said, 'I'm not going to play it or record it as written,' and
Henze said, 'OK, I'll get somebody else; it was a rift.' It wasn't healed, they just went their
separate ways. In fact, the second Sonata might in fact be me palatable for the public ultimately
because it's shorter and the first movement is the most tonal in all of Royal Winter Music, Sir
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Andrew Aguecheek and it would've been fascinating to see what would've happened if they had
actually gone through that process and trimmed 'Mad Lady.' It would have been interesting to see
what would have become of that, but we'll never know.
MM: I've not performed these pieces, but in reading through, the texture is really dense and the
piece seems to require great sensitivity to dynamics and color and facility with extended
techniques. Having performed them extensively, what is your advice to guitarists who might
undertake the task of performing one or both of the Sonatas?
DT: Well, it's a big task. Everything about it is big. In fact, the reason Bream asked Henze to
write this piece is he had come to a place in the early 70s where he felt he gotten a number of
smaller pieces from composers. He'd gotten the Nocturnal in 64 and the Bagatelles, written for
the guitar, are shorter Bagatelles; the Berkeley Theme and Variations in 1970 [editor's note:
Theme and Variations was written for Angelo Gilardino] and he felt like he wanted something
bigger. And who better to think of to get a big solo piece than somebody like Henze who just
wrote one opera after another? There are more than 20 Henze operas, he wrote a lot of large
scale things; the 10 symphonies. So [Bream] went to Henze and he said, 'write me something on
the scale of Beethoven's Hammerklavier,' and Henze, at the same time, had long been thinking of
writing something about Shakespeare or doing Shakespeare characters, so that's how the piece
came to be. When you approach this piece, I think one of the most important things to know
about Henze is that his music is almost always personal, it's almost always programmatic. Not
much of his music is abstract music. If you think of Kammermusik, with the Tientos, that's based
on poetry and so is the Concerto that he wrote for me. Nanette, the great duo that we have for
guitar, it's basically about cats, it's the English cat. Everything relates to something with Henze,
not everything, but almost everything.
So, the first thing in approaching those pieces is to not be too distracted by the language, but to
get into the personalities of the characters. The first thing, I think, is to read the Shakespeare. I've
read each of the plays that those characters are in at least 10 times in studying that piece. When I
got ready to record it the second time I had a break from touring and was in Athens in an
apartment. I had my manuscript, my score and my complete Shakespeare and I just hunkered
down with that world for a couple of weeks just to absorb those characters once again. That's the
first thing, it's really personal and it's about these characters and that's why the language is so
incredibly varied.
It just turns out that he decided to begin and end the cycle with mad royalty. The first movement
is the mad king, Richard III, and the last is Mad Lady Macbeth. So, the language for those are
the most harsh and dissonant and difficult for the audience, but it's just language to reflect these
characters. Romeo and Juliet, which comes next, is just an entirely different language. It's, you
know, the balcony scene and just these two people singing to each other. The stemmed up notes
are her voice and the stem down notes are his voice. Ariel is a magic spirit who flies around, so it
has this airy and whimsical feeling. There are harmonics that fade out at the end of that, and that
is Ariel being granted his freedom by Prospero and going off into the air.
There's a lot of symbolism, and some of it is pretty private. I got to know some of it because
Henze and I did a number of lecture recitals of Royal Winter Music where I would play the piece
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and he would talk between each movement and describe the next movement and what he was
thinking about. I so wish there were tape recorders on at that time, so we could have all of that
stuff.
MM: That would be amazing. Especially for people like me... [laughs]
DT: It would. I just ran into Mark Delprioria at the GFA, who was at one of those concerts in
Manhattan School of Music and he remembered it vividly even though it was in the 80s.
So, you have to get into each of the characters and the really different language that Henze uses
in each of the movements. For instance, Touchstone Audrey and William. There's Touchstone
who's this witty, acerbic character with all these tritones and all of these turned around phrases to
represent the wit. Then there's a double bar, and Audrey comes in and she's, as Shakespeare
describes her, a country wench who is represented by these soft, lovely triplets that roll along and
there is William who's a country fellow, kind of a bumpkin. He is represented by peasant fifths
and he makes his appearance; he's a big guy and he's awkward. Henze introduces these three
characters and then there's a little trio, and, as happens in the play, Touchstone and William
have a fight over Audrey. And you can hear the fight in the last part of that Scherzo and Trio.
Then the very last thing you hear is Touchstone, who's won the fight, flexing his muscles with
Spanish rasgueados; a kind of machismo thing. That all comes from the play; it's all right there.
If you look at that and go: well, there are these tritones and all that [it's confusing]. You just have
to reference the characters all the time, it's really important to do that.
I could talk about that for many hours, but the first thing, the most important thing is to know
that it really comes from Shakespeare and from these characters and to dive into those.
MM: How do you go about making music like this compelling to an audience? As I've read often
about Bream's approach to new works, it's always about how he can make the piece compelling
to an audience. This is one of those pieces where I'm always interested in how you do that.
DT: Yeah, well, it's challenging. I think talking and writing program notes really helps
audiences. I get a lot of feedback that people really like hearing about what they're about to hear.
I went as far as memorizing the Gloucester opening monologue, and I would say it before
playing Gloucester. I would read the monologue. I would stand up and do it and try to be
dramatic with it as well, because that opening movement is based on the opening monologue, the
kind of evil that starts to grow in him as he gives the monologue is represented by the
percussion, which is the only real special effect in all of Royal Winter Music. By the end of the
movement, musically, all that's left is the evil so that the movement ends just with percussion.
That's why it does that. So, I would just read it. I remember I did that once in Baltimore at a
concert and David Russell...
MM: I'm going to stop you there. Is this a concert you played at the Barrueco Summer
Masterclass?
DT: It probably was, yeah?
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MM: In the middle of the summer?
DT: Yeah, I think so...
MM: I was there.
DT: Oh, that's great and David still talking about that. He's still talking about, not so much the
concert, but that I read Shakespeare.
MM: When you were saying that, this memory bubbled up and I thought: I've seen him do this
[laughs].
DT: Yeah, and it took some guts to do it at first but, it particularly made that first movement
more palatable for audiences because, you know, he hits you hard: harsh rhythms, harsh
dissonances. As Henze does in Royal Winter Music, the scope of the guitar is just huge. He never
uses scordatura and he never uses special effects besides the percussion, but he uses the full
range of the guitar and the kind of classic 'Gloucester chord' is all above or on the 13th fret; it's
an E. It's a really high chord. The piece starts with a low F, way down, and [...] the scope of it is
huge. Maybe you have that experience, but when you read the Shakespeare, it personalizes it, it
gives people a handle in there.
People have done various things. I've heard of cases where people have used narrators to read
some Shakespeare, like before Romeo and Juliet to read the balcony scene and then play that.
That's going very far and I think can work without that. Another way is to talk between
movements yourself, not necessarily doing Shakespeare, but saying 'here comes Romeo and
Juliet, she's going to be singing above, he's going to be singing below. You could do some things
like that. I have had the experience also of not worrying so much and just going for it. Especially
even in smaller places, there are certainly some people who are not happy with it, but others
come up and say 'thank you for not treating us like idiots just because we live in a small place.'
So, there are different ways to go, but I think talking is the most logical with a piece like this. I
believe unless it was a Henze festival or modern music festival, some of the time I talked before
I played it.
By the way, the last time I played it for Henze was 2003. I was on tour, he lived near Rome, and
I went to his house and he organized a house concert of me playing Royal Winter Music and he
had composers and people from all over Italy, several people flew in for it. And we had a long
discussion before the piece before the concert where he said 'which Sonata do you think is better
for the public? How can I make this better for the public?' He was thinking about these very
things himself. It turned out that nothing came out of that discussion immediately, but we did
talk a lot about making it more palatable and making it work for audiences. You may or may not
know that in 2005, he published an Interlude that is now used as an insert if you buy Royal
Winter Music, and it is something to be played in between each of the movements of the first
Sonata as a way of unifying the piece. It's a very polytonal, one minute-or-so, piece of music
that's really quite beautiful. It's more in Henze's later style, which is less dissonant. He did that as
a kind of unifying, grounding thing between each of the characters. So he was thinking of things
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also. My former student, Eliot Simpson, did the first recording of the piece with the interlude in
between.
MM: My copy of the score is from before the insert, I'll have to check that out. Moving on,
Maxwell-Davies has used the guitar extensively in his music; which pieces are you familiar with,
besides the Sonata, because I know you've recorded it...
DT: Well, I know them all. I've never played the first one Lullaby for Illian Rainbow, but I have
played Hill Runes extensively. I've never played Dark Angels, and I love that piece, but you're
only doing solo pieces...
MM: I am, but I'm interested in your insight on any of the pieces you'd care to talk about, so if
there's something...
DT: Not particularly, I just think that piece is amazing. So, I worked with Maxwell-Davies, Max,
on the Sonata pretty extensively and I know him; I haven't seen him in some years. I played Hill
Runes for him, but I never recorded that piece. If I were talk about him, I would say: there are
three pieces there, and the one that Bream was involved with is, to me, by far the most successful
of the three, and it's largely due to Bream. I have not seen the manuscript to that, but clearly
Bream did quite a bit of editing because it's dense, but it's less dense than the Sonata. The Sonata
hasn't had much of a life in the world, but Hill Runes, I wouldn't say it's a repertoire piece, but it
certainly gets played.
MM: I was familiar with it in concert before starting on this project, but besides your recording, I
wasn't aware of the Sonata... There's something interesting here I keep coming up against. With
the Sonata, it was apparently written with Bream in mind, but he had the car accident in the early
80s and then the piece was edited and eventually given its first performance by Timothy Walker.
Is that how you know the piece to have come about?
DT: I believe that's right. What I don't know, but suspect is that it's a case like Mad Lady
Macbeth where the music is so dense and so complicated and, perhaps Bream felt, unforgiving
for audiences that he didn't want to play it. I didn't ask Bream that but I think Hill Runes is
shorter and it's more palatable for audiences.
MM: I've been writing about Hill Runes this week, and actually just played through it before I
called; it's a very nice piece.
DT: It's a terrific piece and I love the fact that he's willing to write low counterpoint like that.
Maxwell-Davies does these wonderful things where he adds on top of the counterpoint; he's
added a variation. It's wonderfully written.
MM: That's true. I don't know of anyone who's written for the guitar in the lower register and
made the guitar sound like that.
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DT: That's the thing. What Maxwell-Davies told me was that his goal in writing guitar music
was to not have a whiff of Spain; that you couldn't get a scent of it anywhere. He wanted to get
the guitar into a totally different place. And I think he succeeded in that.
You know, near the end of the first movement of Hill Runes is one of my favorite little tremolo
passages on the guitar. It goes by in 20 seconds or less, but it's this varied use of tremolo instead
of this static use that we typically have.
MM: I'm checking the score...
DT: Do you see where I'm talking about, where the meter changes? It's fantastic.
MM: It is, this is a piece I'm thinking of playing... Next thing, Davies has said a lot that his music
after 1970 is particularly inspired by the area, Orkney in Scotland where he lives and the
mythology of the place as mediated by the writing and poetry of George Mackay Brown. Is this
something you thought about when delving into the Sonata?
DT: It is, and by the way, the Scots pronounce it George [Ma-kie] Brown just so you know. I
was corrected when I went to Scotland as well. He's a wonderful poet, just fabulous. It's a setting
of his words that starts Dark Angels. I read a lot of George Mackay Brown in preparing for the
Sonata but particularly Hill Runes where he's thinking of the landscape of Orkney.
MM: Yeah, there's a quote where he says [the piece is inspired by] the loneliness of the hills of
Orkney that inspires that piece.
DT: Right, so to dive into that, I looked at pictures of Hoy, which is the most remote island in
Orkney. I studied pictures and read a lot of George Mackay Brown and listened to a lot of
Maxwell-Davies music. There's even a Doctoral thesis written about those guitar pieces that I
read. Again, you have to approach these composers and these pieces... of course your focus gets
very narrow, but you have to do it holistically. You've got to get the whole animal; the whole
composer. What's this composer about? Do they hear rhythm first? Are they programmatically
oriented? What are they thinking about? Maxwell-Davies in a way has two sides, there's this
very dense, intense contrapuntal almost dark and some of his most wonderful writing; he's got a
CD called Renaissance and Baroque Variations, which are really fun takes on Renaissance and
Baroque music. He writes these gorgeous Scottish Choral pieces that are very tonal and light and
fun. So there are these two sides you have to study of his. Interestingly, a lot of his commissions
were done by the Scottish Postal Board, apparently the Postal Board in Scotland has a lot of
money for composers and there are these concertos called the Strathclyde Concertos for various
instruments that were all commissioned by this board. So, he's kind of heroic, he's knighted, he's
a big figure, of course, internationally. It's really worth studying his work. There's an opera he
wrote called The Lighthouse, I'm doing it this coming year, and it's got a wonderful guitar part
and the guitarist, at one point, has to play banjo in a couple of songs that break out. So, I've got
to figure out how to get a banjo and how to play one for this opera.
MM: It's not too hard [laughs].
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DT: It's basically just reading chord charts... Oh, do you play?
MM: [Laughs] I hate to be a walking stereotype from Tennessee, but I've played the banjo before
[laughs].
DT: Of course! With that accent, how could you not have?!
MM: Last question on Davies: do you think his music is suited for the guitar? I ask because in A
Life on the Road, Bream speaks about waiting to ask Davies to write a piece because he thought
the style might not fit; it was too big for the guitar.
DT: Yeah. I would go with: too dense for the guitar. Too big is Henze! I think it is an awkward
fit, I don't think it's a natural or particularly comfortable fit, especially for the left hand, but I do
think that he creates a sound unlike any. One of the most thrilling things for me, working with all
these composers, is that I've spent a lifetime playing this instrument and these composers can
make a sound that I haven't heard before. They can make the instrument resonant in a way I
haven't heard before, and that's just fascinating. I think Maxwell-Davies accomplishes that, and
so whatever awkwardness results is my problem. I just have to work hard enough to make it
work. It's not the music of a guitar-composer who's sequencing patterns along the fingerboard;
it's not like that. He purposefully doesn't want it to be like that.
MM: Great. Next composer... I know you had a relationship with Takemitsu; would you care to
speak about that?
DT: Yeah. I knew him from around the time of when I met Bream which was 77 until the end of
his life which was early 96. It became a pretty intense relationship: I have many letters from him,
I also just wrote to him out of the blue and wanted to play Folios for him and on a trip to San
Francisco, he just agreed to hear me. We had various encounters through the years, I did the first
recording of All in Twilight and worked with him preparing for that. In 1991 he ran a guitar
festival in Japan and the only Western guitarists he invited were Barrueco and myself. That
remains to this day the most fascinating guitar festival I've ever been at. It was the most varied, it
was so interesting, and he had organized the whole thing. He made an arrangement of that little
duo Bad Boy for three guitars so we did that, Barrueco and I with Nori Osaka, we did the
premiere of that there. I’ve done various premieres, he never wrote me a piece, I did the US
premiere of the Concerto for Oboe d'Amour and Guitar Vers, L'arc-en-ciel, Palma. It was a long
working relationship and I have many wonderful letters. I also did the US premiere of In the
Woods, I was the second person that ever played that. I worked with him extensively, I would
say.
MM: I would say, different from Royal Winter Music, and All in Twilight is a piece I've played
quite a bit and Towards the Sea and I've played Equinox, I know his language pretty well and
how it works on the guitar. My feeling is that it's very delicate music that requires a lot
sensitivity to color and sound; is this something you'd agree with?
DT: I totally agree with that. He was very influenced by the French Impressionists like Debussy
and Ravel was absolutely thinking about that. It's incredibly detailed music, there are more
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instructions in Takemitsu than any other composer writing for the guitar. We're used to getting
music that has a few dynamics and maybe a tempo marking. But with Takemitsu you color,
articulations, dynamics everywhere. In working with him, he was a little looser than that. Gesture
was one of the most important things to him and he was trying to notate intensely so that you got
a lot of color and you got a lot of gesture. One thing that's overlooked sometimes when thinking
about him is that he knew the instrument very well and he owned two Ramirez guitars. No one
that I know ever actually got to hear him play, which is unfortunate. I kept bugging him, 'come
on Tōru, just show me what you mean here,' and never would do it. In fact, just to go back for a
second to that festival. We all were bugging him, 'OK Tōru, just play a little something for us,'
and he never would. Then, the last night was this kind of grand finale, kind of a big jam session
with everyone from all different style of guitar playing. We kept nudging Takemitsu, and he was
drinking a fair amount of sake, and we thought, OK, we're going to get him to play just a little
bit. So, midnight hits, and finally he slowly ambles up to the stage and we're just thinking, OK
we can finally hear Tōru play the guitar. So, he goes up on stage and he grabs the microphone
and he starts singing the blues in this incredibly small, beautiful voice and so, we heard him sing
the blues, but we never heard him play the guitar [laughs].
He really worked out a lot of these details, obviously on the guitar. For All in Twilight, he told
me that he wrote that in two week period in 1988 or 1989. He wrote it in a two week period and
he had this mountain retreat that he used to go to to compose. He had basically nothing there; he
got well water. I'm not even sure he had electricity. He would go and cook for himself and be
quiet and compose and have no worldly interferences. He told me that he brought a guitar up
there and he spent two weeks and worked the piece out in that period.
MM: Great stuff. You can't find that type of stuff anywhere else...
DT: I know! I can't document it. I'm just telling you the stuff because these guys told me. There's
no way to prove it but he definitely told me that stuff.
MM: The last piece to discuss is The Blue Guitar. This was a piece that was already part of
Bream's repertoire; how did you come to know it, decide to play it and eventually record it?
DT: First of all, just on paper, I was fascinated by the fact that we got a piece from Michael
Tippett, whose music I had admired a lot. And then I was interested in the publication, I think its
in the introduction, where Bream says 'I don't use this word very often, but I think this is a
masterpiece.' You know that's something I'm going to take very seriously if Julian Bream is
saying it. So I dove into the piece and I had a meeting with Tippett, and I think his partner or his
associate Michael Crossley was there as well, we worked on various details and he said look,
'there's something I want you to do,' he said, 'I worked with Bream very extensively on this
piece, we spent a lot of time, a whole summer, on this piece and Julian insists that the movement
that I want to be second has to be third, the fast movement Juggling. But I really don't like it that
way, I want the slow movement ending. Bream did not feel that was going to work with
audiences, but would you do that for me?' And I said of course, I'd be happy to do it that way. So
I played it that way and recorded it that way, and he heard me play it in San Francisco and at a
festival of his music in Albany, NY and also at the Michael Tippett Center in Bath, England.
Every time, he would thank me and say, 'this is really the way I like it, and I want you to keep
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doing this.' And I was challenged for that by several guitarists who said prove that he wants that,
but it was just his word. Eventually it was changed. The publication now is reversed from the
way Bream recorded them and does the slow movement last. I really think the piece works better
that way.
MM: I had wondered about that actually...
DT: Yeah, Bream had an instinct with audiences and he thought there was no way. It almost ends
with a question, it fades out. There's almost nothing there and he thought, he had certainly been
through the wars with new music with people walking out, and he wanted to make things work.
He clearly thought it had to end with the fast movement. It's better for me.
The problem is that the first movement is so long; it's like 10 minutes, and it's moderate tempo.
So to have that and then to have a long slow second movement, I felt that you were going to lose
the audience doing that more so than if you were ending slow. We players are always thinking
about audiences and trying to make things work and that's why Bream made a lot of the
decisions he made. When he had an idea like that, he was strong and strong-willed and he should
be. I think Tippett used me to reverse the tide a little bit he said, 'OK at least I can get it played
how I want some of the time.'
I'll tell you one Tippett story. I was playing at the Michael Tippett Center in Bath and it was an
important concert. Just given that alone it was important, but it was also being recorded for BBC
3 live. And, of course, I really wanted to nail it and I worked especially hard for months to
prepare for that concert. So, I get out there and I'm playing, now I have to say, I never scold
audiences the way Segovia did, I never tell them what to do, but as I'm playing, there's clearly
someone chomping away on gum in the first row. I'm playing and there's this rhythm that's just
going [makes sound] like that. Of course the movement is so long, so I just made a mental note
to myself like, at the end of this movement you've got to look up and at least try to get this
person to put the gum away because this is on tape, it's live, it's got to be disturbing listeners; it's
just nuts! So I finish the movement and I look up and it`s Tippett himself. He's sitting front-row
center and he's got this big smile on his face and he's just chomping away on the gum. And, of
course, I can't tell him to stop so on that recording you can hear the gum in the background
[laughs].
MM: Accompaniment by Michael Tippett...
DT: That's it! Like a drum machine!
MM: Wow!..... Well, I think that's about it. Oh, except for this: there have been three pieces
commissioned in the last few years by The Julian Bream Trust, the Harrison Birtwistle piece and
the two pieces by Brouwer. Have you heard them or do you know anything about them?
DT: Well, I have been waiting with the publisher for the Birtwistle piece, which is the one that
interests me the most. I mean, I love Brouwer, but we have a lot of Brouwer. But Birtwistle, as a
a composer, he's just one of the great ones and I've long wished we could get a piece from him;
he' not a young man anymore. I'm just so glad that has happened. They keep telling me that they
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don't even want to send a preview until it's edited. So it's being edited right now. What I've heard
is that it is a major piece, in terms of length and substance; that it's a really big deal. I've heard
that it's important and big and I just can't wait to get my hands on it. I love that Bream is
continuing his work that way, even though he's not playing, it's just fabulous.
Interview with Eliot Fisk, conducted by phone August 26th 2015.
MM: Hello Eliot!
EF: Hello!
MM: Is this a good time?
EF: Yes, let's do this.
MM: Ok, my treatise concerns the pieces written for Julian Bream, I'd like to get your thoughts
on those pieces and how you think the pieces written for you relate...
EF: Right, in a parallel fashion. Ok, I've got it. So, let me start off with the first part of the
question. Let me start with my opinion about Bream. I think the two greatest works written for
Bream are the Malcolm Arnold Concerto and, obviously, the Britten Nocturnal. I think the
Malcolm Arnold Concerto is the great under-rated piece, it's really a wonderful work; incredibly
original for the time. The use of canon in the last movement--I don't know how he knew how to
write that and have it work; wonderful. The second movement is very original, the first
movement is very original. It's a piece that I think has a lot of life to it and I wish it were done
more often. I think it's so tight in terms of form and Arnold was one of these geniuses, like
Castelnuovo-Tedesco in the same way, they were both film composers of course and they could
literally do what Mozart would do: they would write in pen the orchestra parts horizontally.
That's how perfect their conception of the music was and that's really evident in the Concerto. I
think the concerto's way stronger than say the Fantasy that Arnold wrote for Bream or certainly
the little piece he wrote, I think it's called Serenade for Guitar and Orchestra
MM: It's Serenade...
EF: But, the concerto I think is a real masterpiece; under-rated and under-appreciated. The
Nocturnal has been talked about a billion times. I just gave a long interview about the Nocturnal
and my analysis of it. Basically, my analysis is what I did when I first learned it when I was
seventeen many years ago. Which is basically, it's a song without words. Or actually, better to
say it's word painting, just there isn't a singer singing it. But, every single note of the Nocturnal
can be put to some syllable of the Dowland text, so when I teach it, the first thing I do is go to
the text with people and look at how Britten's word painting is brilliantly related to that particular
text. And of course in that piece the big poetic conceit is: which Shakespeare used and many
poets have used it--sleep, death, second self, that kind of idea. So really, the unanswered
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question, the reason the piece is unfinished, all the variations are unfinished and must remain
unfinished is that the question is: what's death like? That's the real question. What is it like to
die? Is it nothingness? Is it a bad dream? Is it a sweet dream? How do we go gently or un-gently
into that good night as Dylan Thomas put it. That's the real unspoken subtext of Britten's piece.
It's not far chronologically removed from the War Requiem with which it shares a certain--the
War Requiem ends with "let us sleep now." Many people have pointed out the obsession with
sleep and dreams. In Turn of the Screw, which is also another piece, which is harmonically
reminiscent of the Nocturnal. I think that the first note of the Nocturnal, that A on the 4th string,
which I think Britten knew was just about the best note on the guitar--with all the overtones that
come. When you write that A, you're not just writing an A--you're writing an A, but all these
overtones are going to start sounding immediately after that A is plucked. And that reminds me
of the recording of the second act of Turn of the Screw. Where you hear the opening of Peter
Pears singing the tenor role. The second act is Peter Pears calling to the boy in a dream, the boys
name is Miles, and when Pears starts that sound, you can't tell, it sounds like a muted trumpet,
then it sounds like a trombone. And by the time he gets to pronounce the boy's name, you realize
it's Peter Pears' voice calling to boy in a dream. And in a way the Nocturnal, I think, starts in
guitarist terms with that kind of a musical gesture. The original Dowland song has two parts:
ABB. And of course the repetition of the B is what's cut in Britten's quotation of Dowland at the
end and in the variations it's always truncated. In some variations, the B section's very short, like
in so-called variation 4 [sings variation tune], the B section's very short. Some of them like
number 5, the B section's [sings March with Dowland's lyrics] it's total word painting. Also if
you look at the second phrase of the text "Come heavy sleep, the image of true death," the word
death is always a piquant dissonance, always, in all the variations. The Passacaglia consists of
three further variations, the last variation starts with the pizzicato, the 2nd variation starts with
that D major seventh chord [sings], so basically the Nocturnal in terms of theme begins in
Britten's language and ends in Dowland's language. And in the middle there are three sets of
three variations, so 2,3, 4 is a set, 567 is a set and passacaglia has variations 8910. The exact
mid-point of the piece becomes variation 6 in my analysis--the dreaming variation, which
actually kind of starts in g major. Britten's use of the open strings--Britten is a tonal composer--
although that's not to say he uses a tonal center, but he's always playing with bi-tonality and this
whole kind of bifurcated existence. Which he must have experienced in his life with Pears at that
time being two very subtly gay and linked people at that time, the Oscar Wilde trial not that
distant a memory. His whole life obviously was very much in sync with coded messages and all
that kind of thing. The ambivalence in the harmony, the multiple meanings of the harmony and
the suggestion of a lot of enharmonic pitches, G-sharp turns into A-flat kind of thing, which he
does all the time; reinterpreting the same pitch to mean one thing viewed in a certain light and
another thing viewed in another light. That has a lot to do with the harmonic subtleties of the
piece. I think the main question in Nocturnal is to get the form, the big form. The big form is
1331 and then the next division of form is where the B section starts in each variation and then
down to individual phrases and then down to the various word painting, which I think is much
more descriptive than any type of pitch class analysis or any of that crap! That would all work,
but it's such an un-musical way to describe how we react. I don't think it's a very helpful analysis.
It may explain certain things, but really I think Britten was a composer who wrote by ear and
wrote very instinctively. Not to say that he didn't have tremendous craftsmanship, he did, but I
think his ear was doing that all--it's not like he was Stockhausen and had to have this grand plan
and then he composed out of then plan. I think his ear automatically did it, maybe in way like
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Bach did. I don't think Bach sat down and made a Stockhausen-like plan. I think Bach did this
stuff automatically, because that's the kind of mind he had. Theorists can go back and things and
explain this and explain that but the composers know what they want to say and they say it. The
way creativity happens is not from people building some kind of nice model and then, like an
engineer designing a building; let's put it this way: the composer's more like an architect than an
engineer executing the architect's visions, finding practical bolts screws and girders and all that.
That's a different kind of creativity than the architect. The architect has the soaring vision of a
great structure that can have a positive effect on people's lives and that's the composer.
Composers, in my experience, work more in that way than composing out of some kind of
system. That's usually the mark of second-rate people. The good people write mostly by ear I
think. So those would be my first two choices for pieces written for Bream.
I also think the Walton Bagatelles are fascinating pieces. I prefer Walton's song cycle, I think it's
a much greater work than the Bagatelles. I like the Bagatelles much better in the orchestra
version. That gives a much better idea of what Walton thought he was writing and it's completely
unrealizable on the guitar. They have to completely re-thought.I don't think you can do what Vari
Capricci does on the guitar. At all. Particularly the 4th Bagatelle, which maybe the most
beautiful one where the French horn has those long notes. You do the best you can on the guitar,
but I really think the Bagatelles - although they're played a lot - are completely unrealizable on
the guitar. I think the phrasings and articulations and the things he wants, I think it's just almost
impossible to do on the guitar. Plus, the first one is so uncomfortable to play. But the song cycle,
Anon in Love, is by far the better piece, and really a great work. I also love the Songs from the
Chinese by Britten those would be my two chamber music picks. Probably The Songs from the
Chinese number one because of the thematics of it. It just never leaves you. I mean, The Old
Lute, my God, it's my absolute favorite of all of them. It's just an amazing Lydian meditation. He
used that Lydian thing in the Nocturnal as well. It's part of what Dowland does when he says the
image of true death when he raises the fourth degree. He's using Lydian mode.
What else was written for Bream? Well, the Brouwer Sonata's become canonic, everybody's
playing that now like crazy; maybe it's a little over played. I prefer the last movement. It's the
most interesting and the most beautiful movement. The other two are Ok, they use the instrument
brilliantly, I don't think provide as much amusement. These are my personal opinions.
MM: There's The Blue Guitar by Michael Tippett...
EF: Blue Guitar! I think The Blue Guitar is an interesting piece, if you compare that Sonata to
the Tippett Piano Sonatas, I think Tippett was totally stymied by the guitar. He didn't really
know how to write for it. It doesn't sound like other Tippett very much. Especially after I heard
the Piano Sonatas - barn-storming things! I think The Blue Guitar has wonderful moments. I
think it's not a totally fantastic piece, but very good. Certainly Tippett is not like a guitar-
composer. It's definitely a major work. I don't have as much affection for it as some of the others.
Then there's the Berkeley Sonatina, it's the best Berkeley piece. There are the early four pieces
that were written for Segovia, of which the first is great, and the other three I can't make sense
of. I don't know what he was thinking. The first one is delightful.
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What else? .... Hill Runes by Maxwell-Davies, which I find totally inscrutable. I cannot penetrate
that at all. I guess it's supposed to sound like the barren Orkney Islands coastline, and it does […]
I guess, but I find that piece completely inscrutable and way to much work for what it represents.
Wait.. There's another Sonata that's very good, which is that?
MM: There's the Bennett Sonata...
EF: Bennett Sonata! The Bennett Sonata is way better than the Impromptus, the Impromptus, I
don't like very much. Bennett should have just written some nice jazzy pieces, I think that's what
he wanted to do. But I think the Sonata and Bennett Concerto are really good although Bennett
doesn't stick in my gut the way the Britten, Arnold and the Walton do...
I think my top four pieces so far would be the Britten Nocturnal, Songs from the Chinese and
Walton Anon in Love and the Arnold Concerto. Those would be my favorites...
Those pieces combine great intellectual rigor and great sensuality on the instrument…
MM: Do you have any observations on the Henze pieces?
EF: I think the Henze pieces have incredible moments and they're just way too long for what
they try to do. The Henze Tientos, not the Kammermusik, but the Tientos are masterpieces;
perfect, jeweled masterpieces. I think Henze was a great choice to be commissioned. But Henze
in his notation, certainly in the Second Sonata which I've looked at much more than the First
Sonata, but in the Second Sonata he notated all this stuff that's completely physically impossible
to hold. Reinbert Evers was the one working with Henze, and he didn't put his foot down
enough; he was too cowed by Henze. At least everything Bream got out [of Henze in] the first
sonata; it is physically possible to play it. I think it's an awful lot of work for not a lot of
pleasure. That's my feeling about those pieces. The Tientos I think are the three little jeweled
masterpieces. I can't say enough about them, I think they're wonderful.
Again, Takemitsu is another very important composer. I'm not the greatest fan of Takemitsu's
music. It's tremendously hard to play on the guitar, very un-idiomatic. You can't be off even the
tiniest micro-millimeter or some note in some chord doesn't sound. I find the Takemitsu pieces to
be very good music. He had an exquisite ear and exquisite sensibility, but [the guitar pieces] are
kind of like a snowflake: if you take it inside, it turns to water if you're not absolutely perfect; the
conditions have to be perfect for it to work.
I think Bream was obviously heroic in showing that the guitar could do this dissonant repertoire
and have it be, to some extent, commercially successful. But I think the real successes were
fairly early on actually. He certainly pursued some of the right people; that's for sure. Lot's of
English people, good English people and Henze and Takemitsu internationally. Is that it?
MM: There are a handful of lesser-known composers like Tristram Cary, Tom Eastwood, Peter
Fricker...
127
EF: I don't think those are very good...
MM: Searle's Five is a decent piece, there are more... you've hit the major ones.
EF: The one's that I like are the ones that get my gonads going and don't just titillate my intellect.
That's what I'm after. The composers I've worked with, I've worked very hard to make sure that
anything they write for me is centrally pleasurable to play on the instrument. I push very hard,
very hard. I've worked with mostly non guitar composers. I'd say Beaser and Berio were the two
that most perfectly understand the instrument. Paradoxically, Rochberg wrote a lot for me, and
big stuff, important stuff, but maybe the most idiomatic Rocheberg pieces are the violin
variations that I stole [laughs]. The Caprice Variations are more idiomatic for the instrument
than the guitar music that he wrote. Some of it was just about unplayable, like The Muse of Fire
for flute and guitar, a huge 18 minute fantasy for flute and guitar. A very important piece, but I
had to re-write the part and he was very curmudgeon-ly at this point in his career [laughs] and he
didn't want to publish anything except what he wrote and even if it wasn’t going to sound. On the
other hand, I think the American Bouquet is very lush and idiomatic and has beautiful guitar
writing. There's another chamber music piece, Eden: Out of Time and Out of Place inspired by a
Yeats poem, which is for guitar, wind trio and string trio. Guitar and six instruments, which was
composed for the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, 20 years ago now...
Schwertsik is another fantastic, very interesting composer. Eine Kleine Requiem, I think, is a
very important work. I think if Boosey and Hawkes will get off their ass and publish it that the
Requiem will start to have a life of its own. I've seen the Nicholas Maw piece grow into a certain
semi-popularity in a part of the guitar world. It's amusing to me to see young players try their
hand at this stuff when I knew the composer. It's interesting to see that even though the notation's
quite specific, very often they just completely miss the point. Tempos, especially the tempos are
wrong. In the Muse of Fire everyone plays the theme way to slow--it's not slow! [sings] It's a
string quartet and it's not slow. I remember Nick whistling it and he didn't whistle it slow.
Guitarists, because it has a lot of notes in the chords, they go [sings too slow], they play it
vertically! I don't know what time signature they think they're in, but they play the eighths like
they're quarters or something. It's nuts!
So it's amusing for me to see people playing these pieces were I really knew the composer and
have a good feeling for what the composer might have wanted. I wonder about some of Bream's
tempos in the Nocturnal, I've always wondered. The most curious thing about the Nocturnal is
that in the published music it says duration 14 minutes. You see that?
MM: Yep, that's what it says...
EF: Fourteen minutes is fucking nuts! Bream's at 18 or 19 and I can't get below 16, and I
wouldn't want to. I think what happened, like with Takemitsu and the metronome marking for
Folios, I think when composers sit and read the music they speed things up in their mind. I think
they typically have too fast a metronome marking as opposed to what might actually sound. I
don't know what Britten was thinking when he wrote that 14 minutes. I imagine Britten sitting in
a chair, reading the Nocturnal looking at his watch at the start and the stop or starting a stop
watch. 14 minutes doesn't make any sense at all, I don't know what you'd have to do to the
128
languorous parts.
Now, I think most people are way too slow for most of the Nocturnal. I think that, certainly what
he calls variation 2 can move, also variation 3 which I think Bream completely misreads in his
choice of tempo. He says rubato [equals] the dotted half, that means he wants it thought of in
one, not in three. I think that [sings faster than Bream's tempo] and Bream plays it [sings Bream's
tempo] and I think that's too slow. But he's Julian Bream, he can get away with it, but I don't
think it's right, I think it's wrong [laughs]. Also the Passacaglia I think he does way too slow. I
think the Passacaglia needs to be way more intense and very, what the Germans call Unruhe,
unquiet. Defining that bass line... I think the Passacaglia should be way more up-tempo.
MM: Another question I have for you, that I think fits in here, is: when you worked with these
composers, did you feel like you needed to help them make their musical style idiomatic on the
guitar?
EF: Absolutely, I did that in every single case. There were sometimes they would write a
movement that needed almost no changing; a lot of the times they were written that way. But
many times it was not that way, and even with Berio who was maybe the most perfect of all of
them, I made little, tiny changes like slipping an open string in somewhere so I didn't have to
skip strings, I could slide the thumb or slide the 'a' finger because that piece is so complex
anyway.
MM: Did you present specific things the guitar could do to them?
EF: Oh yeah, definitely. I remember there was this one place in the Berio Sequenza, this rising
sequence, about 4 pages from the end I think. There's this rising sequence [sings] and it ends up
near the top of the instrument with this one chord that's repeated quite a lot in an arpeggio. In
that whole passage, he was using the G sharp which would be the first-fret third-string G sharp.
He was using it a lot and there was no way to make that passage fluid. So he sat there and he
stared at the passage for about 30 seconds without a single word and then said 'OK, every place
you see a G sharp, put an open B,' and that solved the passage. Now, when it came time to edit
the piece, get this, amidst all that chaos, he calls me and says [quotes Berio in Italian] 'there's an
octave in there that I don't like,' because in one case he had B-B, an octave. In that crazy fast
passage, all 32nd notes, his sense of perfection was such, his craftsmanship was such, that he did
not want the consecutive octave; two notes consecutively the same in two different octaves.
Although he writes chords that, to double the chords up he would have an octave within a chords
sometimes, but he did not want that B melodic octave, not even at the speed of 32nd notes
[laughs]. [Quotes Berio in Italian] 'There's a B natural that I don't like.' So these were really
jeweled craftsman that I worked with. And I learned an awful lot from them.
MM: How do you feel that works written for Bream and for yourself relate to the massive body
of work that was written for Segovia?
EF: It was a very different time. First of all, Segovia's was an immensely long career. There are
piles and piles of things written for Segovia. There weren't that many composers that had great
compositional technique that wrote for Segovia. There are a handful. The most perfect technique
129
of all the people who wrote for Segovia was probably Castelnuovo-Tedesco. The themes were
not always as deep s say Ponce's, but Castelnuovo had the most incredible technical command.
He had an incredible mastery of form. He had an incredible mastery of counterpoint, to the point
that he wrote stuff all of his life that became totally unplayable and had to be completely re-
written. Right up to the end when he wrote that Double Concerto which is just a mess of two
guitar writing; writing fast three-note chords, bouncing all over the instrument, just impossible to
play. It's crazy! It has to be totally re-written! Despite that, I think Tedesco was the one who had
the most perfect technique, in terms of form, part-writing everything... He was the most perfect
composer who wrote for Segovia.
Now, Ponce may have been deepest in a way. Ponce and Villa-lobos. Villa-lobos, obviously,
wrote pretty near perfectly for the guitar and didn't need much editing. Ponce, Segovia re-wrote
famously, in every possible way. Like in Tema y variado, Ponce sent him eleven Variations,
Segovia put the order of the variations, same thing with the Folia. In many places, in the
Concerto, we know Segovia wrote the cadenza.
Let's expand the list, we had Tansman who had excellent technique for sure. Turina, for sure had
excellent technique. Moreno Torroba who had this tremendous gift for melody and for catchy
tunes and romantic style. Who else?
MM: Besides the ones that he didn't play like Frank Martin, you've hit the ones I can think of off
the top of my head.
EF: Then there are all these people that Gilardino brought out, the Segovia archives, most of
which--Mompou is another one, the Suite Compostalana, which I think is a significant work.
But, for Segovia there was a huge quantity, but as far as serious composers it's about the same
number as Bream. Except with Bream, the lesser composers, people like Searle and all these
people that write in an academic style that's not very attractive. Segovia had people who
understood the public and wrote for the romantic soul of Segovia and for Segovia's public.
Segovia's repertoire is certainly much more crowd-friendly. Of Bream's pieces, the stuff that's
accessible to an audience, Britten's piece just barely gets by somehow, the Walton Bagatelles are
probably the most attractive solo piece to an audience, and the song cycles and maybe the
Brouwer Sonata if you count that. But Bream's [target] was a much more academic composer.
These very well-educated people with good compositional techniques, they know what they're
doing and all that but, they're not ... [laughs] crowd-pleasing types of composers. Much more
intellectual. That was the turn that classical music took in the 60s and 70s and into the 80s when
most of the stuff was written for Bream. By the 80s, post-modernism is starting to make a
comeback and Takemitsu could write that last Jazzy G major movement in All in Twilight and
get away with it. But of course Leo's Sonata is written more tonally...
Bream's hey-day happened to coincide with a very dry style in classical music. That's what drove
everyone away from classical music until Reich and Glass brought back minimalism and post-
modernism hit and contemporary music started to become fun again for people.
But Bream's career coincided with a dry time so that's why composers wrote more academically;
they could get away with it then. Pretty soon they realized there wasn't going to be an audience if
130
they went on in that idiom.
You know, Bream was very courageous. I saw him on tour playing the first Henze Sonata and he
did a terrific job. He put his heart and soul into it, he tried to save it the best he could. I think
there are incredible moments in the Henze Sonata, incredible moments, but I think the whole
piece is a mix; the Lady Macbeth movement just goes on and on. It’s just, oh God, hard to make
sense of it. Henze was a genius. I knew him a little bit. Obviously I know Leo [Brouwer] but
outside of Leo and Henze, I don't think I know [personally] any of the composers who wrote for
Bream.
So we've got this progression from Segovia to Bream, and so where--I'm not asking you to
compare yourself to either of those figures-- but where would you say the works written for you
fit with those repertoires?
EF: I do though. I look at them as an inspiration actually. [pauses] Let's put it this way:
obviously, in terms of quantity of works, I don't think anyone has had more written for them than
David Starobin; piles of music. But I think not very much of it is going to go into the canon
because it's not just that beautiful, most of it. The most important piece is obviously Carter's
Changes and that's a very anti-guitaristic piece. It's just not written well for the instrument. The
instrument does not sound; sometimes it does, but a lot of times it doesn't. So, I think that a lot of
that music is going to live and die with David. I hope some the stuff I've been able to help create,
I hope that it combines some of the earthiness and romanticism of the Segovia style with the
intellectual integrity and rigor of Bream's stuff. I've tried to combine the two.
Segovia was the number one influence on my choice to become a musician. He's still my idol
and I think it's a shame that some guitarists are into dissing Segovia. I don't see how you could
ignore him. What I love about Segovia was the combination of real intellectual rigor and this
incredible poetic gift that he had [...] and originality of musicianship. I think Segovia was for me,
all told, a greater musician than Bream. Bream, as a colorist, is unparalleled on any instrument in
the history of music. But I think sometimes the instrument got the better of him. With Segovia I
never felt that the instrument got the better of him. I felt that Segovia's musical conception was
right on. Even in Baroque music. Segovia never played super-slow Sarabandes and he's right.
Performance practice would bear him out. His Chaconne, of course, is very personal but one of
the most beautiful to listen to--certainly nothing's topped it. Historically speaking, it's, as much
as he could, a modified Busoni for guitar. One could disagree with this, especially the overture,
which I think is a complete misunderstanding of what Bach was righting when Bach started the
Chaconne off with an Overture - it's big, it's loud - but Segovia made it sound like the voice of
God coming from... God knows where [laughs]. He had this wonderful conviction in playing it
and poetic sense. In fact, I do measure myself against Segovia and Bream and try to be the
exponent carrying that quest on as best as I've been able to do it.
Interview with Marco Sartor, conducted by e-mail on August 30th 2015
MM: Why did you decide to play Eastwood’s Ballade-Phantasy?
131
MS: Eduardo Fernandez introduced the work to me in the late 90's when I was his student. Up to
that time I had never worked on a piece of such complexity. I always felt a sort of gratitude
toward the work, because at the time I learned immensely from it. The fact that there was no
recording made it both exciting and a great training, since I had to build an interpretation of this
intricate work with no preconceived ideas. Of course over time, the work grew on me, and I
played it in concerts many times. On my CD Red I wanted to record works that had had an
impact on me, so it was one of my first choices.
MM: What musical details did you focus on when preparing your interpretation?
MS: At first I tried to focus on each of the indications and the expressiveness of each gesture.
From there I worked on building the whole interpretation, the coherence of the piece--each
movement builds a big arc. Also, as with many works by composers non-guitarists, I focused on
how to solve the sonority of passages that might work well in, let's say, the piano, but not as well
on the guitar.
MM: What advice would you give to other guitarists performing the piece?
MS: To do it! It deserves to be played more. Of course carefully follow the dynamics, the
rhythms, and all other indications. Think of its most effective place within the program, perhaps
in the middle of more traditional and upbeat works, for it starts and finishes with an introverted
character.
MM: Where there any musical or technical difficulties that stand out?
MS: The first aspects that might stand out are the shifting rhythms and the metronome
equivalences. The fast tremolo parts in the middle of both movements are what appear to be
technically most difficult, but, as it is often the case with the guitar, the slow sections are even
more challenging. They require a high degree of control, since they create moods
and atmospheres that are quite fragile. The obstinato at the end of the Phantasy, for example, has
this hypnotic quality that demands utmost control from the performer. In general, it is also
difficult in the guitar to play slow melodies lyrically, and this work presents a few of them.
MM: My general analysis is: the Ballade is basically improvisatory but uses the recurring
appoggiatura from the opening melody to hold the piece together; the Phantasy is composed in
three sections, an intense introduction that presents the tritone motive; an improvisatory middle
section marked meno mosso that features repeated note figurations; and a third section marked
con moto that employs an ostinato bass melody in A minor. The piece closes with a coda on the
opening material, the triton is the device that holds the sections together. Is there anything you
would add?
MS: I agree with your overall analysis. I'm not sure about the word improvisatory though. The
Ballade is carefully composed and presents and develops not only the appoggiatura, but complete
thematic material, which can also be seen as related to the thematic material of the Phantasy.
Rather, partly because of the rhapsodic discourse, I see both movements as variations of either a
theme, thematic idea, or cell. Which I think is interesting put in the context of the other English
132
guitar works written during the same years, (1969-70-71, many of them for Bream in fact). They
are all based on variations: “Theme and variations” by Lennox Berkeley, “Fantasy-Divisions” by
Stephen Dodgson, “Paseo” by Peter Racine Fricker, “Variants on two themes by J.S.Bach” by
Reginald Smith Brindle, “Elegy for guitar” by Alan Rawsthorne. You might have an idea worth
exploring there.
MM: To my knowledge, your recording is the only existing commercial recording; do you know
of others?
MS: I don't know of other recordings.
Interview with Zachary Johnson, conducted by e-mail on September 17th, 2015
MM: Why should one play the Bennett Sonata or Impromptus?
ZJ:The Impromptus are a great representation of strict serialism that is presented in a very
cosmopolitan and melodic style. It is the perfect work to present on a recital to help expose an
audience to an atonal work, and show them that it can still be lyrical and have moments of great
beauty. This work is more in line with original idea that Schoenberg had when he devised
serialism: in that he didn’t view it as atonal music, but pan-tonal music. The astute listener will
be presented with a kaleidoscopic rotation of tonal centers.
The Sonata is a much more challenging work, for performer and audience, but can be very
rewarding. Using similar techniques, yet pushing them further, and breaks away from the initial
matrices further satisfy Bennett’s music priorities, which is always lyricism. It does what the
Impromptus did in the exploration of textures and timbre of the guitar, and broadens out
formally.
MM: What are the particular difficulties of performing the Sonata?
ZJ: It is a very technically demanding piece, on par with works such as Britten’s Nocturnal or
Rodrigo’s Invocazion and Danza, The Sonata, however, is a bit more challenging to maintain
Bennett’s lyricism within the denser harmonic language of the Sonata.
MM: If you were to offer a brief analysis/description of the Sonata for the busy performer, what
would it include?
ZJ: Prayer! Being serious though, focus on discovering where the melody is, and focus on
making that even more present and heard. It’s easy to allow that to dissolve into the surrounding
material, but the melody must be ever present to give something for the audience to be brought
into the piece.
MM: Where do you feel Bennett’s solo pieces fits within the larger repertoire written for Julian
Bream?
ZJ:I think they fall in two different categories. The Impromptus are very in line with his earlier
commissions of the 60s. Expanding tonally and harmonically beyond the standard repertoire left
133
by Segovia, but still staying within an accessible language for a still quite conservative audience.
I put it on par with Berkeley’s Sonatina, Henze’s Drei tentos, and similar works. It is a great
piece for an intermediate performer or student to introduce themselves the challenges and
rewards of serialism, and, as I mentioned before, great for the advanced performer to present a
work of true serialism to an audience, and hopefully alter there perception of what atonal is and
can be.
The Sonata reflects the growth both in Bream’s daring as a performer, and the growing of the
audience’s acceptance of more challenging works. It is on par, tonally, harmonically, and
technically with Henze’s First Royal Winter Music Sonata and Britten’s Nocturnal, in my
opinion. It is certainly not for the faint of heart, but the technically and musical difficulties will
serve the advanced guitarist well is the art of parsing through “superfluous” material to find an
ever present and important melodicism.
134
APPENDIX B
PERMISSIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE
From: Michael McCallie Wed, May 27, 2015 at 11:15 AM

To: Julie Haltiwanger
Hello Mrs. Haltiwanger,
My name is Michael McCallie. I am a DMA student in the College of Music, and am

starting work on my doctoral treatise. My project will present an overview of the pieces of
music written for the British guitarist Julian Bream, and I would like to interview three
professors/artists who are also prolific commissioners of new works about their thoughts on
Bream's body of commissions as well as their own.
I have spoken with Prof. Jane Clendinning, who is on my committee, about the project and
she feels that these interviews fall under Oral History. Would you recommend that I submit
a full IRB protocol?
Thank you for your help,
Michael McCallie
From: Haltiwanger, Julie Thu, May 28, 2015 at 8:56 AM

To: Michael McCallie
Cc: "Clendinning, Jane"
Upon review, it has been determined that your protocol is an oral history, which in general,
does not fit the definition of "research" pursuant to the federal regulations governing the
protection of research subjects. Please be mindful that there may be other requirements such
as releases, copyright issues, etc. that may impact your oral history endeavor, but are
beyond the purview of this office.
Julie Haltiwanger
Office of Research
From: Michael McCallie

Sent: 23 September 2015 21:07
To: FM – Copyright
Subject: Michael McCallie – Request Score-Use Permission for Dissertation
135
Hello,
My name is Michael McCallie. I am a Doctoral Candidate at Florida State University in the

United States and am submitting my Doctoral treatise titled: A Survey of The Pieces Written for
Julian Bream.
I am contacting you to ask for permission to include excerpts from a few Faber scores in the
completed manuscript. A partial objective of the treatise will be to entice guitarists to purchase
and perform the full scores of works with which they might not be familiar.
Please let me know how to proceed with obtaining permission to use the excerpts. Below is a list
of specific pieces and measure numbers.
Peter Racine Fricker, Paseo

Meas. 1-2, 144-145, 199-202
Tom Eastwood, Ballade-Phantasy

Ballade, meas. 1-4, meas. 57
Phantasy, meas. 1-2
Best,
Michael McCallie
Bruce MacRae Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 7:05 AM

To: Michael McCallie Cc: Charlotte Mortimer
Dear McCallie,
Thank you for writing to us. We are happy to grant permission for you to use the quotes
mentioned below in your doctoral dissertation. We do not require you to sign a licence to this
effect, nor to pay any licence fees, provided we may have written confirmation from you (a
return email is sufficient) that copyright lines will be attached as per the following:
PASEO
All rights reserved
BALLADE-PHANTASY
136
All rights reserved
PLEASE NOTE this permission does not extend to any commercial exploitation. If your
doctoral dissertation, or any part thereof including the excerpts mentioned below, is printed in a
commercial publication please contact us for a commercial licence.
Best wishes,
Bruce MacRae
Contracts and Licensing Manager
Faber Music Ltd
The information and attachments (if any) in this email are confidential, may be legally privileged
and are intended solely for the addressee(s). Access, copying or re-use of information within it
by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient you should not disclose,
copy or use any part of it. Please notify the sender and delete all copies immediately.
Faber Music Limited is not responsible for the completeness or accuracy of this communication
as it has been transmitted over a public network. It is the recipient's responsibility to scan this
email and any attachments for viruses. If in doubt please verify the authenticity of the sender.
Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent
those of Faber Music Limited or any of its holding or fellow subsidiary companies.
Michael McCallie Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 12:36 PM To: Bruce MacRae
Hello Bruce,
Apologies for the delay in returning your email. I have realized that another I will need to
excerpt an additional Faber score, Malcolm Arnold's Fantasy for Guitar, Op. 107, in my treatise;
I wanted to be sure before responding. Would it be possible to obtain permission to excerpt this
as well?
Thank you!
Michael McCallie
Bruce MacRae Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 6:52 AM
Dear Michael –Of course, no problem, please consider it included in the permission email
below. The appropriate copyright acknowledgement is as follows:
137
FANTASY FOR GUITAR
All rights reserved
Your request has goaded me into listening to these pieces – thankyou! – I must confess despite
being a big fan of classical guitar music none of these pieces I had heard before.
Best wishes,
Bruce
Bruce MacRae
Contracts and Licensing Manager
Faber Music Ltd
From: Michael McCallie Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 4:21 PM
To: Helen Macfarlane
Subject: Michael McCallie - Request Score-Use Permissions for Dissertation.
Hello,

Julian Bream.
I am contacting you to request permission to include excerpts from a few Chester and Novello
scores in the completed manuscript. A partial objective of the treatise will be to entice guitarists
to purchase and perform the full scores of works with which they might not be familiar.
Giles Swayne, Solo for Guitar, Op. 42 Meas. 63-66, 143-146, 43
Lennox Berkeley, Sonatina for Guitar, II, meas. 1
Best,
Michael McCallie
138
From: Macfarlane, Helen Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 12:04 PM
Hi Michael,
Many thanks for your email.
Chester Music Limited and Novello & Company Limited are happy to grant you gratis
permission to use extracts of the following works in your doctoral dissertation written at Florida
State University. This is provided that this dissertation is not for commercial sale and is not
published in print or online:
Solo Music by Giles Swayne © Copyright 1986 Novello & Company Limited. All Rights
Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Printed by permission of Novello & Company
Limited
Sonatina For Guitar Music by Lennox Berkeley © Copyright 1958, 1993 Chester Music
Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Printed by permission of Chester
Music Limited.
You must include the above © line in your dissertation/thesis where the extract(s) appear.
Many thanks, do let me know if you have any further questions.
Best wishes,
Helen
Kind regards,
Helen Macfarlane Print Licensing Administrator
From: Michael McCallie Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 9:50 PM

To: "Macfarlane, Helen" <Helen.Macfarlane@musicsales.co.uk>
Hello Helen,
Thank you so much for your response! I wanted to check one thing: my dissertation will be
available to be accessed freely through a database at Florida State University. It will not be
for sale, but can be viewed. Will this be a problem?
Michael McCallie
Macfarlane, Helen <Helen.Macfarlane@musicsales.co.uk> Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 4:28 AM

139
Hi Michael,
Thanks for email. Yes, it is fine for your dissertation to be available via your University’s
database.
Many thanks
Best wishes,
Helen
Hello,

Julian Bream.
I am contacting you to ask for permission to include excerpts from a few Schott scores in the
completed manuscript. A partial objective of the treatise will be to entice guitarists to purchase
and perform the full scores of works with which they might not be familiar.
Reginald Smith-Brindle - Nocturne, meas. 1-5; 35-38
Richard Rodney Bennett - Impromptus, Agitato, meas. 30-31; Con fuoco, meas. 1-3
Denis Apivor - Variations, Op. 29, meas. 1
Toru Takemitsu - All in Twilight - I, meas. 1-4; 47-48; III, meas. 1

In the Woods, Muir Woods, meas. 11-14
Michael Tippett - The Blue Guitar - Transforming, meas. 85-86; Juggling, meas. 42-45; 51-
52
140
Hans Werner Henze - Royal Winter Music, First Sonata - Romeo and Juliet, 1st line;
Oberon, Pg. 32, 1st line; Last line of composition. (No measures)
Drei Tentos from Kammermusik 1958 - I, meas. 3-5; II, meas. 21-24
Best,
Michael McCallie
From: Caroline Kane Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 9:51 AM

Dear Mr. McCallie:
Please just let me know your mailing address. I will send you the permission agreement by
e-mail, but we need your mailing address for our records.
With best wishes,
Caroline Kane
Caroline Kane
VP, Licensing and Administration
Schott Music Corporation/
From: Michael McCallie Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:12 AM

To: Caroline Kane
Hello Caroline,
Wonderful! Thanks for the quick response.
Cheers!
Michael McCallie
From: Michael McCallie Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 10:50 AM

To: Caroline Kane
141
Hello Caroline,
I hope this finds you well! I responded with my mailing address, but have not received any
information regarding these permissions. Would you be able to update me on the status of
these at your earliest convenience?
Best,
Michael McCallie
From: Caroline Kane Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 6:09 PM

Dear Michael,
Attached please find the permission agreement for the use of excerpts from our copyrighted
works in your doctoral dissertation. Would you please sign and return 2 copies of this
document to my attention along with your payment? I will then send you your copy fully
executed.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
With best wishes,
Caroline Kane
From: Michael McCallie Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 10:53 AM

To: Caroline Kane
Hi Caroline,
Thank you for sending this. Would it be possible to add Royal Winter Music II, “Mad Lady
Macbeth,” mm. 270-271 to this list? Can I pay be check? Or is there a place to process a
credit card payment?
Best,
Michael McCallie
142
From: Caroline Kane Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 11:14 AM
Dear Michael,
Yes, please write in “Mad Lady Macbeth,” mm. 270-271 on the Schedule A, and initial the
change.
Yes, you may pay by check; please make your check payable to “Schott Music
Corporation.”
And yes, you can pay by credit card, but we will add a $3 credit card processing fee to the
$50. If you wish to pay by credit card, please complete the attached form and return it to
me along with the signed permission agreement.
With best wishes,
Caroline Kane
From: Michael McCallie Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 10:57 AM

To: Caroline Kane
Hi Caroline,
Apologies for the delay! Here is the credit card payment information and the permissions
document. I have one question regarding the permissions: Florida State makes all theses,
treatises and dissertations available for free download over a database, does this permission
allow for that?
Thank you for your time and help, please let me know if you need any additional
information to execute the permission.
Best,
Michael McCallie
From: Caroline Kane Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 7:08 PM
143
Dear Michael
Attached please find the permission agreement fully executed. Also attached please
find your receipt for your payment by credit card.
Yes, this agreement covers FSU’s free downloads over a data base of your
dissertation.
With best wishes,
Caroline Kane
From: Michael McCallie Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 10:57 AM

To: info@operatres.es
Hello,
My name is Michael McCallie. I am Doctoral student at Florida State University

in the United States. I am writing a treatise on the works written for Julian Bream
and would like to include a 3 measure excerpt from the Opera tres score of
Brouwer's Sonata for Guitar.
If it is possible, would you let me know how to obtain permission to use this
material?
Best,
Michael McCallie
From: Arancha Arancha <info@operatres.es> Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 4:06 AM

Reply-To: Arancha Arancha
144
Dear Michael,
I think it will be no problem but I want to check it in the SGAE (THE SPANISH
ASSOCIATION FOR EDITORIALS).
Best regards,
Arancha
From: Michael McCallie Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 10:50 PM

To: Arancha Arancha
Hello Arancha,
Thank you for your response! Please let me know if there is anything you need
from me. I look forward to your response.
All the best,
Michael McCallie
From: Arancha Arancha Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 3:14 AM

Reply-To: Arancha Arancha
Hello,
No problem, you can use this material with our permission.
Have a nice weekend.
Best regards,
Arancha
Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 4:04

PM
To: sales.us@editionpeters.com
145
Hello,
My name is Michael McCallie. I am a Doctoral Candidate at Florida State

University in the United States and am submitting my Doctoral treatise titled: A
Survey of The Pieces Written for Julian Bream.
I am contacting you to request permission to include excerpts from a Peters score

in the completed manuscript. A partial objective of the treatise will be to entice
guitarists to purchase and perform the full scores of works with which they might
not be familiar.
Please let me know how to proceed with obtaining permission to use the excerpts.
The piece is Reginald Smith Brindle's Variants on Two Themes of J. S. Bach, here
are the movements/measures I would like to include: Poco adagio meas. 1-
4; Vivo meas. 4, Lento meas 1-2, 12-13; Allegretto meas. 2-5
Best,
Michael McCallie
From: Gene Caprioglio Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 10:27 AM

OK Michael, we’ll send permission shortly. Also Dan from Cutler’s Records
says hi. Best, Gene
Gene Caprioglio
Vice President for New Music and Rights
From: Michael McCallie Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:10 AM

To: Gene Caprioglio
Hi Gene,
Thank you! I'll keep an eye out for the permission.
Tell Dan I said hello, I knew he worked at Peters and was wondering if the
146
request might cross his desk; I guess it did.
Cheers!
Michael McCallie
From: Hector Colon Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 9:05 AM

Hello,
We need your mailing address in order to send you our official letter of
permission.
Thanks,
Héctor Colón
New Music and Rights
718-416-7815
From: Michael McCallie Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 10:18 AM

To: Hector Colon
Hello,
My mailing address is: (omitted)
Best,
Michael
From: Michael McCallie Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 12:52 PM

To: Stephen Robinson
147
Hey Steve,
I hope you're doing well! I've got a quick question for my dissertation: I remember in a
lesson--years ago--you said you felt that Nocturnal, ideally, should end without applause;
could I quote you on this in the chapter on the Britten?
Looking forward to seeing you in the spring!
Best,
MM
Michael McCallie
From: Stephen Robinson Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 1:03 PM

Sure. Just my opinion. Looking forward to seeing you as well! Thanks for working it out!
Steve
Dr. Stephen Robinson

Professor of Music
Stetson University
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
APPENDIX C
THE PIECES: REFERENCE TABLE

Composer Piece Publisher/Date Reference Recording Duration
Smith-Brindle Nocturne Schott, 1948 Keith Sullivan, 4.5 minutes
Dance, Nocturne,
Elegy (The Orchard,
2000)
Smith-Brindle El Polifemo A. Bruzzichelli, Julian Bream, 7 minutes
de Oro 1963 Classical Guitar
Anthology - Julian
Bream: The Complete
RCA Album
Collection. ([S.l.]:
Sony Music
Entertainment, 2013),
Disc 12.
Smith-Brindle Variants on Edition Peters, None 15.5 minutes
Two Themes 1973
of J. S. Bach
L. Berkeley Sonatina for J. & W. Julian Bream, 11 minutes
Guitar, Op. Chester, 1958 Classical Guitar
51 Anthology - Julian
Bream: The Complete
RCA Album
Sony Music
Entertainment, 2013)
Disc 1.
Henze Drei Tentos Schott, 1958 Julian Bream,
from Classical Guitar
Kammermusik Anthology - Julian
1958 Bream: The Complete
RCA Album
Sony Music
Disc 12.

155
Henze Royal Winter Schott, 1976 Julian Bream, 34 minutes
Music: First Classical Guitar
Sonata Anthology - Julian
Bream: The Complete
RCA Album
Sony Music
Disc 34.
Henze Royal Winter Schott, 1980 Franz Halász et al., 23 minutes
Music: Henze: Guitar Music,
Second Vol. 1 ([S.l.]: Naxos
Sonata Rights International,
2010).
ApIvor Variations, Schott, 1960 None 8 minutes
Op. 29
Britten Nocturnal, Faber, 1963 Julian Bream, 18.5 minutes
Op. 70 after Classical Guitar
John Anthology - Julian
Dowland Bream: The Complete
RCA Album
Sony Music
Disc 12.
Bennett Impromptus Universal Julian Bream, 8.5 minutes
Edition, 1971 Classical Guitar
Anthology - Julian
Bream: The Complete
RCA Album
Sony Music
Disc 34.
Bennett Sonata for Novello, 1989 Maximilian Mangold, 23 minutes
solo guitar Englische
Gitarrenmusik =
English guitar music
(Kassel:
Cantate/Musicaphon,
1997).
Eastwood Ballade- Faber, 1969 Sartor, Marco, Red, 9 minutes
Phantasy CD (Buffalo, NY:
Fleur de Son Classics,
2010)
156

Fricker Paseo, for Faber, 1971 Antonis 10-11
Solo Guitar Hatzinikolaou, Music minutes
of Memory, Audio CD
(NMC Recordings,
2013)
Arnold Fantasy for Faber, 1970 Dejan Ivanovic, 13 minutes
solo guitar Guitar Recital ([S.l.]:
Naxos, 2002)
Walton Five Oxford Julian Bream,
Bagatelles University Classical Guitar
Press, 1971 Anthology - Julian
Bream: The Complete
RCA Album
Sony Music
Disc 22.

Searle Five Faber, 1976 None 8.5 minutes
Rawsthorne Elegy: For Oxford Julian Bream, 8 minutes
Guitar University Classical Guitar
Press, 1975 Anthology - Julian
Bream: The Complete
RCA Album
Sony Music
Disc 22.
Swayne Solo for Novello, 1996 Tom Kerstens et al., 15 minutes

guitar, op. Black Venus: New
42 Music for Guitar,
Audio CD (BGS,
2011).
Maxwell- Hill Runes Boosey & Julian Bream, 8.5 minutes

Davies Hawkes, 1983 Classical Guitar
Anthology - Julian
Bream: The Complete
RCA Album
Sony Music
Disc 22.
157
M. Berkeley Sonata in Oxford Craig Ogden, Guitar 13 minutes
One University Works by Lennox and
Movement: Press, 1983 Michael Berkeley
for solo (Colchester, Essex,
guitar England: Chandos,
2004).
M. Berkeley Impromptu Oxford Ibid. 3 minutes
University
Press, 1991
Tippett The Blue Schott, 1985 David Tanenbaum, 17 minutes
Guitar: Acoustic counterpoint
Sonata for classical guitar music
Solo Guitar from the 80’s. (San
Francisco (Calif.):
New Albion Records,
1990).
Takemitsu All in Schott, 1989 Julian Bream, 11.5 minutes
Twilight Nocturnal ([England]:
EMI Classics, 1993).
Takemitsu Muir Woods Schott, 1996 Fukuda, Shin-ichi, 15 minutes

from In the Toru Takemitsu:
Woods Complete Solo Guitar
Works (Japanese
Guitar Music, Vol. 1),
Guitar Collection
(Naxos Classical,
2014).
Brouwer Sonata Opera tres, Bream, Nocturnal. 16 minutes

1991

158
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpNZROHfP_k.
“Michael Berkeley Biography.” Michael Berkeley: Composer & Broadcaster. Accessed August
22, 2015. http://www.michaelberkeley.co.uk/biography.
“Private Passions on BBC Radio 3, Presented by Michael Berkeley.” Michael Berkeley:

Composer & Broadcaster. Accessed August 22, 2015.
http://www.michaelberkeley.co.uk/private-passions.
“Sir Malcolm Arnold - Telegraph.” The Telegraph. Last modified September 25, 2006. Accessed
September 9, 2015. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1529701/Sir-Malcolm-
Arnold.html.
167
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Award-winning guitarist Michael McCallie has distinguished himself as one of the most
promising young performers and teachers working within the classical guitar community today.
As a performer, Michael has garnered several awards including a prize in the 2004 Stetson
University Concerto Competition and top prizes in both the Chattanooga, TN and Cleveland
Young Artists’ Competitions. He has performed in concert halls throughout the United States,
including Sprague Memorial Hall at Yale University, the Cohen-Davison Theatre at the Peabody
Conservatory of Music and Dohnanyi Recital Hall at The Florida State University. In 2003,
Michael was given the distinct honor of being chosen by the eminent guitarist and composer,
Roland Dyens, to perform the composer’s own Songe Capricorne for an audience of guitar
luminaries at the Stetson University International Guitar Workshop.
Michael holds a Master’s of Music in Guitar Performance from Yale University as well
as a Bachelor of Music from Stetson University. He is currently a Doctoral Candidate at Florida
State University, where he is a scholarship student of the world-renowned pedagogue, Bruce
Holzman. In 2004, Michael was one of fifteen young guitarists chosen from around the world to
perform for acclaimed guitarist Manuel Barrueco in a week-long summer masterclass at the
Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University. Michael’s principal teachers
include: Charles Evans, Dr. Stephen Robinson, Kevin Gallagher, Benjamin Verdery and Bruce
Holzman.
In addition to his skill as a performer, Michael has earned a substantial reputation as a

teacher of young children using the Suzuki Method. From 2006-2011, he transformed the
fledgling guitar department at The Talent Education Suzuki School in Norwalk, CT from a
studio of six students into one of the largest studios in the state of Connecticut. For his
outstanding teaching at Talent Education Suzuki School, Michael was awarded two prestigious
career development grants, for 2008 and 2009, from Home Box Office in New York City.
Michael’s students have received numerous accolades including top prizes in regional
competitions, including The Tallahassee Bach Parley’s Kids Go For Baroque Youth
168
Competition, and several have been selected performers at the Hartt School of Music’s Suzuki
Institute. Several of Mr. McCallie’s students have been accepted into prestigious music schools
around the country including The Mannes School of Music’s Pre-College Division and the
Berklee College of Music. Michael has served on the faculties at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural
College in Tifton, GA and Darton College in Albany, GA and was Artistic Director of The Seven
Hills Guitar Series in Tallahassee, FL from 2012-2015.
169

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A Survey of the Solo Guitar Works Written

A SURVEY OF THE SOLO GUITAR WORKS WRITTEN FOR JULIAN BREAM

A Treatise submitted to the

Jane Piper Clendinning

List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vi

CHAPTER 1—INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1

Biography of Julian Bream .......................................................................................................... 2

CHAPTER 2—THE PIECES WRITTEN FOR JULIAN BREAM ............................................. 11

Reginald Smith-Brindle – Nocturne (1946), El Polifemo de Oro (1956), Variants on

CHAPTER 3—CONCLUSION.................................................................................................. 106

APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................ 107

A—INTERVIEWS ..................................................................................................................... 107

B—PERMISSIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE .................................................................... 135

C—THE PIECES: REFERENCE TABLE ................................................................................. 155

REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 159

Figure 1: B—A—C—H Motive ................................................................................................... 15

Figure 2: J. S. Bach, Fugue Subject from BWV 861 .................................................................... 15

Figure 3: ApIvor, Variations, Op. 29 Twelve-Tone Matrix ......................................................... 32

Figure 4: Eliot Fisk’s Interpretation of the Form of Britten’s Nocturnal ..................................... 39

Figure 5: Octatonic Scale .............................................................................................................. 98

Example 1: Smith-Brindle, Nocturne, mm. 1-5 ............................................................................ 13

Example 2: Smith-Brindle, Nocturne, mm. 35-38 ........................................................................ 14

Example 3: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Poco adagio,” mm. 1-4 ............................................... 16

Example 4: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Vivo,” mm. 4 ................................................................ 16

Example 5: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Lento,” mm. 1 .............................................................. 17

Example 6: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Lento,” mm. 12-13 ....................................................... 17

Example 7: Smith-Brindle, Variants..., “Allegretto,” mm. 2-5 .................................................... 18

Example 8: L. Berkeley, Sonatina, Op. 52 No. 1, “Lento,” mm. 1 .............................................. 23

Example 11: Bennett, Impromptus, “Agitato,” mm. 30-31 .......................................................... 45

Example 12: Bennett, Impromptus, “Con fuoco,” mm. 1-3 ......................................................... 46

Example 13: Eastwood, Ballade-Phantasy, “Ballade,” mm. 1-4 ................................................. 48

Example 14: Eastwood, Ballade-Phantasy, “Ballade,” mm. 57 ................................................... 48

Example 15: Eastwood, Ballade-Phantasy, “Phantasy,” mm. 1-2 ............................................... 49

Example 16: Fricker, Paseo, Op. 61, mm. 1-2 .............................................................................. 52

Example 17: Fricker, Paseo, Op. 61, mm. 144-145 ...................................................................... 53

Example 18: Fricker, Paseo, Op. 61, mm. 199-202 ...................................................................... 53

Example 24: Walton, Five Bagatelles, “Allegro,” mm. 60 .......................................................... 64

Example 28: Rawsthorne, Elegy, mm. 1-3 ................................................................................... 71

Example 29: Rawsthorne, Elegy, mm. 20-23 ............................................................................... 72

Example 30: Rawsthorne, Elegy, mm. 163-165 ........................................................................... 73

Example 31: Swayne, Solo, Op. 42, mm. 63-66 ........................................................................... 76

Example 32: Swayne, Solo, Op. 42, mm. 143-146 ....................................................................... 77

Example 33: Swayne, Solo, Op. 42, mm. 43 ................................................................................ 78

Example 34: M. Berkeley, Sonata in One Movement, mm. 1-3 ................................................... 86

Example 35: M. Berkeley, Sonata in One Movement, mm. 67 .................................................... 86

Example 36: M. Berkeley, Sonata in One Movement, mm. 76-78 ............................................... 87

Example 37: M. Berkeley, Sonata in One Movement, mm. 17 .................................................... 88

Example 39: Takemitsu, All in Twilight, “III,” mm. 1-2 ............................................................. 98

Example 40: Takemitsu, All in Twilight, “I,” mm. 47-48 ........................................................... 98

Example 41: Takemitsu, All in Twilight, “I,” mm. 2-3 ............................................................... 99

Biography of Julian Bream

An Englishman playing the guitar is a kind of blasphemy.

A Note On the Choice of Pieces

THE PIECES WRITTEN FOR JULIAN BREAM

Reginald Smith-Brindle – Nocturne (1946), El Polifemo de Oro (1956), Variants on Two

Reginald Smith-Brindle (1917-2003)

Smith-Brindle and the Guitar

Following this chance encounter, Smith-Brindle became a lifelong guitar aficionado. He

Example 1: Smith-Brindle, Nocturne, mm. 1-5

Reginald Smith-Brindle NOCTURNE

Example 2: Smith-Brindle, Nocturne, mm. 35-38

Reginald Smith-Brindle NOCTURNE